TORONTO, June 26, 2009 -- Two former politicians instrumental to the debate about health care reform over the last decade will receive honorary doctorates from York University on Sunday, June 28.
Roy Romanow, former premier of Saskatchewan and head of the Royal Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada and Michael Kirby, a retired senator and chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada, will each receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from York’s Faculty of Health.
Both men are tireless advocates for health care reform and both delivered seminal federal reports on health care in 2002. The reports are sometimes seen as polarized positions in the public versus private health care debate, although they agreed on the basic principle of a single-payer system funded by the government.
The Romanow report, Building on Values: The Future of Health Care in Canada, included a range of recommendations aimed at ensuring a universally accessible, high-quality, publicly administered health care system. The report concluded that medicare is sustainable if Canadians were prepared to act decisively on 47 recommendations for reform to home care, prescription drugs, federal-provincial transfer payments, and Aboriginal health care, among others.
The Kirby report, The Health of Canadians – The Federal Role, urged greater private sector involvement in health care delivery based on the belief that the system was not sustainable in its present form. The report recommendations included coverage for catastrophic drug costs, establishing a health care guarantee for wait times, and instituting service-based funding for hospitals.
In recent years, Romanow has become a champion of health prevention and promotion referring to it as the report’s “chapter not yet written,” while Kirby is leading efforts to reform mental health care in Canada, most notably through the well-received report Out of the Shadows at Last.
Who: The Honorable Roy Romanow receives an honorary Doctor of Laws degree
When: Sunday June 28, 2009, at 10:30am
Where: Tennis Canada Rexall Centre on York’s Keele Campus (map)
Who: The Honorable Michael Kirby receives an honorary Doctor of Laws degree
When: Sunday June 28, 2009, at 3:30pm
Where: Tennis Canada Rexall Centre on York’s Keele Campus (map)
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Media contact:
Killeen Kelly, Media Relations, York University, 416 736 2100 x22938 / killeenk@yorku.ca
