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From the archives

Is Public Service Delivery Obsolete?

Why competition between civil servants, corporations, and non-profits is good for everyone

This Dear Green Place

Our latest last best hope

Promoting Democracy Abroad

Is it the right time for Canada to take on this file?

Michael Decter

Michael Decter is the board chair of Patients Canada, Medavie Blue Cross and The Walrus Foundation. He has served as Ontario’s deputy minister of health and chair of the Canadian Institute for Health Information. He is the author of Healing Medicare: Managing Health System Change the Canadian Way (McGilligan Books, 1996), Four Strong Winds: Understanding the Growing Challenges to Health Care (Stoddart, 2000) and the co-author with Francesca Grosso of Navigating Canada’s Health Care: A User’s Guide to Getting the Care You Need (Penguin, 2006).

Articles by
Michael Decter

Saving Medicare

As costs steadily rise, we need to build a healthcare system outside hospitals September 2014
In the mid 1990s, when the government of Ontario was closing hospitals and laying off nurses at a brisk pace, Saint Elizabeth Health Care, a leading homecare provider, was going around hiring as many laid-off “wound care specialists” as it could afford, thinking they might come in handy in the burgeoning field of home care. Wound care specialists are usually registered nurses specially trained to deal with the aftercare from…

Trading with the Sharks

How can we best protect ordinary investors? July–August 2012
Alice Campbell is the first victim we meet. A long-time employee of Nortel, both her disability income and her pension were badly compromised by the company’s descent from technology leader to its current receivership. When Bruce Livesey, then a producer with CBC’s Investigative Unit, shared with Alice information on million-dollar bonuses paid to Nortel senior…

Eliminating the Caboose

Technological advances need to override nostalgia and ideology in our healthcare system. November 2008