Imagine getting health care right away. That's what it's like in Japan's universal system. Our new documentary examines their system and lessons for Canada.

Two countries, the same twenty years, opposite directions. In SecondStreet's new documentary on England's academies and free schools, a researcher from an English education charity says England's primary school children now rank as the best readers in the western world on the PIRLS international study, and that England has climbed on PISA in both reading and maths. She is careful about why. The gains lined up with the period when academies and free schools spread, rather than being proven to have caused them. Canada slid over the same stretch. The C.D. Howe Institute reports that seven provinces have dropped more than 40 points on PISA maths since 2003, which it puts at roughly two years of lost learning. What England changed was structural. It let non-profits takeover and run failing public schools while keeping them publicly funded and tuition-free. Alberta has done a version of that for thirty years and has had great success. The rest of the country has not tried it. Learn more about how to fix Canada's education system at SecondStreet.org Read the full report at SecondStreet.org (secondstreet.org/2026/09/06/…)

Alberta parents get a fourth option. Everyone else gets three. Alberta has 48 charter schools, about 2 per cent of schools in the province, teaching roughly 15,400 students in 2024, up from 9,400 in 2016. They are publicly funded, tuition-free, and run by non-profits rather than by a government school board. No other province allows them. Our Leger poll of 1,659 Canadians in late February found 56 per cent want the Alberta model brought to their own province. Nineteen per cent are opposed. Support runs highest in Quebec at 61 per cent, and highest of all among parents with school-age children at 66 per cent. England opened this up to the whole country and the results have been great (see our new documentary). Canada already has the proof at home. It sits in one province. Learn more about ideas to improve Canada's schools at SecondStreet.org Watch the full documentary from SecondStreet.org: secondstreet.org/2026/09/06/…

Yes, a crisis. The Vancouver Sun covers the health care bulletin we put out today – vancouversun.com/news/bc-cri…

Our research was cited in today's Vancouver Sun. Read the coverage by Tiffany Crawford below: vancouversun.com/news/bc-cri…

Canadians pay near the top and wait near the bottom. According to the Fraser Institute, which compared 31 high-income countries with universal public health care systems, Canada ranked third highest for health spending as a share of GDP in 2023. On the number of doctors available to treat people, Canada ranked 27th out of 30. Spending is not the gap. The way the money moves through the system is. Fund hospitals for every patient they treat instead of handing them a fixed budget, and treating more people stops being a cost problem for them. Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: fraserinstitute.org/studies/…

Twenty thousand Alberta families put their kid's name down for a school they could not get into. Research shows Alberta's charter schools have a waiting list of more than 20,000 students. These are public schools, free to attend, run by non-profits rather than a school board. Alberta is the only province in Canada where parents have that option. England opened the same model up country-wide. In our new documentary, a former education minister points to one non-selective London school in a poor neighbourhood where half of all exam grades are top marks, matched only by Eton, one of the country's top private schools. Alberta has had this model for 30 years and has had great success with it The other provinces can do the same. Learn more about ideas to improve Canada's schools at SecondStreet.org Watch the full documentary from SecondStreet.org: secondstreet.org/2026/09/06/…

Health Care in Canada - Ask Us Anything! nitter.net/i/broadcasts/1oKMvNVrM…

Don't forget to join us at our September town hall tonight! 5PM MST/7PM ET Register here: secondstreet.org/how-to-fix-…

It sounds like a contradiction. A school that parents start, that the government pays for (with tax dollars), that costs families nothing to attend. England calls them free schools. Parents, teachers or charities apply to open one. It is funded out of the same public budget as every other state school, uses the same national exams, charges no tuition and holds no entrance exam. What it does not have is a local school board running it. Toby Young was a dad in west London who wanted a different kind of school for his kids, so he started one in 2011. Last November the Sunday Times named it Comprehensive of the Year, making it the top-rated non-selective state school in the country. He says more than ten families still apply for every place. Alberta has allowed a version of this for thirty years. Everywhere else in Canada, a parent who wants something different has to pay for it or move. Nothing is stopping the other provinces from copying the successful approaches of Alberta and England. Learn more about how to fix Canada's education system at SecondStreet.org Read more from the source: secondstreet.org/2026/09/06/…

When the emergency room in a small town closes, the emergency does not close with it. Northern Health confirmed the Hudson's Hope health centre in northeastern British Columbia lost emergency services from September 2 until the morning of September 8, on top of a closure that ran August 21 to 31. Both were blamed on staffing. Residents were told to call 911 and be driven to whichever hospital had staff that day. Rural Canadians are not asking for more than anyone else. They are asking for the doors to be open. Countries with blended systems keep small-town care running by letting communities contract for the staff they need. Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: energeticcity.ca/2026/09/02/…

Your doctor makes the referral. Then the waiting starts. Statistics Canada reports that 27.8% of Canadians aged 45 and older had difficulty accessing specialist care, which works out to roughly 4.5 million people. That is just the first consultation, before any test or treatment begins. The knock-on effect is the part that gets missed. Among middle-aged adults who struggled to reach both a family doctor and a specialist, 54.4% went without care they needed. Countries like France and Australia, which have better-performing public systems, treat patients through a mix of government and non-government providers, and their patients get in faster. Canada can borrow what works without giving up universal coverage. Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/925…

A big problem in Canada is that patients often don't need hospitals, they need long-term care. But as there's limited space in the latter, they end up taking up hospital beds, backing up the system. Internal Santé Québec data obtained by The Canadian Press through an access to information request shows 726 people were sitting in Quebec hospital beds on August 3 waiting for a long-term care placement. That is up from 568 in 2023-24. Every one of those beds is a bed that someone in the emergency room downstairs cannot have. This is a structure problem rather than a funding problem. Other universal systems fund hospitals for each patient they treat, which gives them a reason to move people to the right level of care instead of parking them. Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: lethbridgeherald.com/news/na…

As our latest Policy Brief shows, choice in education is leading to better outcomes for students in Alberta. 📈 Across all seven categories where direct comparisons could be made: charter school students outperformed their peers in government-run public and Catholic schools. Our Outreach Director, Paula Iturri explains:

It's the top-rated hospital in Canada consistently ... so what can other hospitals learn from it? SecondStreet.org President, Colin Craig, visited Mount Saint Joseph and came away with three takeaways: First, it was not set up by a health authority. Catholic sisters started the work about a century ago to help people the system was leaving out, and that mission carried through to the organization running the hospital today. Providence Health Care is a non-profit with its own independent board. It delivers publicly funded care under an agreement between the Province of British Columbia and the Denominational Health Association. Second, staff are trained to ask patients what they actually want. How are you feeling today. What would you like to do today. The care plan gets built from the answers. That sounds obvious until you read hospital reviews across the country, where patients keep saying the opposite: nobody listened. Third, staff said they felt listened to as well. The people working with patients every day usually know what is working and what is not, and this hospital seems to have built a place where they can say so. Public funding with non-government delivery is how much of Europe runs health care. It is already working here. Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Watch the full video: piped.video/watch?v=nirPajm-…