Canada’s Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal Involving Right to Private Health Care
The Supreme Court of Canada will not hear an appeal from a Vancouver physician who has led a legal challenge over a patient’s right to access private health care.
The Supreme Court’s decision, handed down on April 6, ends the challenge by physician Brian Day, two Vancouver-based private health facilities, and four patients who argued that the British Columbia Medicare Protection Act violated their Charter rights by subjecting them to long wait times for health care in the province’s publicly funded system.
The appellants argued that the long wait times in the publicly funded system breached their rights to life, liberty, and security of the person guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The federal court’s decision not to hear the appeal comes three years after the B.C. Supreme Court dismissed the constitutional challenge and one year after the province’s Court of Appeal upheld the decision.
The B.C. Court of Appeal said in its decision last year that the Medicare Protection Act’s fundamental purpose is to ensure that access to medical care for all those eligible in the public system is based on need and not a patient’s ability to pay.
Day, who opened the Vancouver-based Cambie Surgery Centre in 1996, launched his original charter challenge 14 years ago in 2009. Day’s challenge argued that public health care wait times are too long and end up preventing patients from paying for private services if they are able to do so.
The Epoch Times reached out to Day for comment on the federal court’s dismissal of his appeal but did not hear back by publication time.
B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix said in a statement on April 6 that he was “pleased” with the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear Day’s appeal, saying the decision “bolsters our public health-care system.”
The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
