Book Launch: Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada, by Gregory P.  Marchildon

There was an important international context in which Tommy Douglas formulated and implemented his plans for universal health coverage in Canada while premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 until 1961. While much of the narrative in Gregory Marchildon’s Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada focuses on domestic politics and policy, international politics and policy played a central but overlooked role at critical points. These influences include the wartime Beveridge Report and the visit to Canada by Lord Beveridge in 1943, and the eventual National Health Service in the United Kingdom. Another was the influence of rural health programs during the New Deal in the United States and Douglas’s decision to draw on both lessons and senior personnel. Douglas also carefully studied advances in the welfare state by Labour and social democratic governments in the UK, New Zealand, Sweden, and Israel.

 

Gregory P. Marchildon is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He is the founding director of the North American Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. He has published numerous previous books on public policy and history and is a recipient of the Order of Canada.