Canada spends more on medical care than ever before — yet patients still face long waits, too many people can’t find a family doctor, and health workers are burned out.

Why?

The answer exposes a hard truth that is too often ignored: Health doesn’t begin in hospitals and doctors’ offices — it begins in safe homes, adequate incomes, quality child care and education, and healthy environments.

Read Our Report on Why Health is More than Medical Care

Decades of health science confirm that investments in the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age matter even more for wellbeing than the medical care they receive after becoming sick or injured. 

Government used to follow this prescription when designing their budgets. In the 1970s, provinces routinely spent more on social and education investments than on medical care. Now the opposite is true.

All provinces prioritize spending on medical treatment far more urgently than investments in the social and environmental conditions that keep people healthy in the first place.

It’s time to realign government budgets with the wisdom that medical care alone cannot create health.

If we want Canadians to truly "get well,” we must invest where health begins even more urgently than we invest in medical care.