Grant: Operating Grant

Privatization of healthcare system financing and delivery has been on and off Canadian reform agendas for the past 20 years. During the past decade, it became a central feature of the reform discourse in Canada at large, but this trend has accelerated in Quebec following the Chaoulli ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada in June 2005, which set the table for active agenda-setting efforts around specific healthcare financing policy proposals. In this context, the proposed research has two overarching objectives. The first is to understand current policy-making processes resulting from the interactions between policy proposals, interest groups, public opinion and the media. In this regard, the healthcare financing debate in Quebec constitutes a revelatory case to understand broader but under-investigated policy processes. The second objective focuses on the privatization debate itself. The goal is to provide empirical data on the evolution of the privatization policy arena and on the processes and forces that drive it. Such evidence will be directly useful to researchers and decisions-makers as well as to the general public. It will lead to a better understanding of policy processes that potentially have a tremendous impact on health policies and, ultimately, on the health of all Canadians.