LET’S PUT CANCER
ON THE AGENDA.
Dear Federal, Provincial and Territorial Health Ministers:
We are writing on behalf of Cancer Action Now, an alliance of patient organizations, professional associations, and life sciences companies advocating to ensure Canadians have access to high-quality cancer care when and where they need it, towards the goal of improving cancer survivorship in Canada.
As you convene in Charlottetown on October 12 to discuss Canada’s healthcare system, we urge you to prioritize the hundreds of thousands of people living in Canada affected by delays and gaps in screening, diagnosis, treatment and surgery of all forms of cancers across the country.
Cancer care has reached a crisis point because of widespread disruptions of screening, diagnosis, treatment and surgeries prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Statistics Canada, in 2020 diagnosis of cancer cases dropped 12.3% lower than the average annual rate over the previous five-year period, due to Canadians experiencing challenges accessing primary care and screening appointments cancelled1. This means more patients now are presenting with advanced stages of cancer, requiring aggressive treatments and more surgeries, adding more pressure and costs to already overburdened health systems.
We acknowledge the recent and ongoing efforts by your governments to address many of these challenges, including the progress achieved on health funding agreements to boost health system capacity. However, cancer patients and stakeholder groups across the country are concerned by the lack of focus on cancer care outcomes within these agreements. We urge your governments to make cancer a priority and ensure that cancer is a focus when implementing provincial action plans on priority areas including: access to primary care, reducing surgical backlogs, access to mental health services and health data.
We call on all Health Ministers to implement the recommendations below to ensure thousands of people in Canada touched by cancer and their families can access the care they need, where they need it, and live healthier, longer lives than anywhere else in the world. Health systems in Canada need long-term and adequate funding that includes dedicated funding streams for cancer care. New investments can come to fruition by leveraging new funding via the Canada Health Transfer and new health bilateral agreements:
Your governments have a responsibility and can tackle important priorities to improve cancer care in Canada, with particular attention on increasing the availability of primary care for all Canadians, improving data collection, bolstering health human resources, supporting team based interdisciplinary holistic care and ensuring equitable access to screening and treatment for all Canadians, no matter where they live.
Important signs of progress will be when we see more Canadians diagnosed with early-stage cancer, fewer diagnosed with late-stage cancer, and those living with cancer not just surviving but thriving. This will mean our cancer care system is truly responsive to the needs of Canadians it serves.
Please commit to taking cancer action now.
Sincerely,
The Cancer Action Now Alliance
1 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230516/dq230516c-eng.htm
2https://www.all-can.org/news/ni-news/optimizing-diagnosis-in-canadian-cancer-care/
3 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijc.33884
Submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance for the 2024 Pre-Budget Consultations in Advance of the Upcoming Federal Budget
In 2022, patient organizations, professional associations, and life sciences companies witnessing the magnitude of the problem in our cancer care systems came together to form Cancer Action Now, a national alliance advocating to ensure Canadians have access to high-quality cancer care when and where they need it, towards the goal of improving cancer survivorship in Canada.
Cancer care has reached a crisis point because of widespread disruptions of screening, treatment and surgeries prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Statistics Canada, in 2020 diagnosis of cancer cases dropped 12.3% lower than the average annual rate over the previous five-year period1, due to Canadians experiencing challenges accessing primary care and screening appointments cancelled. This means more patients now are presenting with advanced stages of cancer, requiring aggressive treatments and more surgeries, adding more pressure and costs to already overburdened health systems.
The pandemic also exacerbated the shortage of health care providers, with 2022 research showing nearly 6 million Canadians don't have a family doctor, and a third of them have been looking for over a year2. This means fewer people are being referred for screening and investigation of cancer in a timely manner, leading to even more delayed diagnoses, with many cancers detected at a later stage when they are more difficult to treat.
Our cancer care systems were struggling in the years before the pandemic. Now the situation is even worse, and our strategies must evolve in response. Canada needs to urgently address the myriad problems plaguing our health systems across the continuum of care, from primary care to specialist care, to supportive, palliative and end-of-life care. Moreover, the quality of care Canadians receive and how long they need to wait before they receive it, should not depend on which part of the country they live in.
We are calling on your government to implement the three recommendations below to ensure hundreds of thousands of Canadians touched by cancer and their families can access the care they need, where they need it, and live healthier, longer lives than anywhere else in the world.
Recommendation:
Work with provinces and territories, health care providers across the cancer care continuum, patients, caregivers, and equity-deserving groups, with guidance from the federal all-party cancer caucus, to establish a set of common, pan-Canadian standards for cancer care. This will provide an evidence-based framework for care delivery that people in Canada can rely on from coast to coast to coast.
Canada has already made progress with a National Diabetes Framework, National Long-Term Care Services Standard and the ongoing development of National Standards for Mental Health and Substance Use Services.
With dollars committed to this work in the upcoming budget, national standards for cancer care should be developed with the goal of equitably addressing gaps in priority areas, such as, increasing participation in and access to screening programs, reducing time from suspicion to diagnosis, reducing late-stage diagnosis, ensuring improved access to supportive, palliative and end-of-life care, and improving access to and adoption of biomarker testing that can advance effective therapies and improve patient outcomes, among other areas.
Recommendation:
Building on the work done by the Canadian Cancer Society, Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, and the Pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy Expert Advisory Group, invest in the creation and implementation of a pan-Canadian cancer data strategy to ensure accountability in care delivery, interoperability across the continuum of cancer care and transparent reporting on year-over-year progress against specific cancer metrics. This work should involve health care providers across the cancer care continuum, patients, caregivers, and equity-deserving groups to ensure the metrics included and measured lead to tangible improvements in the cancer care system.
Building on the work done by the Canadian Cancer Society, Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, and the Pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy Expert Advisory Group, invest in the creation and implementation of a pan-Canadian cancer data strategy to ensure accountability in care delivery, interoperability across the continuum of cancer care and transparent reporting on year-over-year progress against specific cancer metrics. This work should involve health care providers across the cancer care continuum, patients, caregivers, and equity-deserving groups to ensure the metrics included and measured lead to tangible improvements in the cancer care system.
We call on your government to invest in a cancer care data strategy to improve the timeliness of data capture and availability, establish data quality indicators, ensure cancer data interoperability and integration, fill gaps on social determinants of health data and enhance collection of patient-reported outcomes and experience. It is also vital that your government measure the cost of cancer annually and work in close collaboration with provinces and territories to make progress towards personal health records and improve data sharing between physicians, care teams and patients.
Recommendation:
Work with national organizations and provincial and territorial partners to address access and inequity issues facing the cancer system, such as, access to therapies and innovative, genome-based therapies for cancer care and ensure the quality of care Canadians receive and how long they need to wait before they receive it, does not depend on which part of the country they live in.
With the recognition that science is delivering rapid advances in cancer treatment, which are fundamental to improving outcomes, quality of life and survivorship for Canadians facing cancer diagnoses, especially at late stages, we ask that your government ensure that mechanisms to ensure timely access clinical trials or new cancer treatments be made a priority.
Rural and remote populations in Canada face a variety of barriers in accessing preventative care and treatment, including longer travel times, higher costs, and fewer available healthcare resources. They may be less likely to access or participate in cancer screening programs, may experience lengthy wait times to see specialists, or have to travel outside their jurisdictions to access care.
Canadians participate in a lottery every time they have a brush with the health care system, and it can mean the difference between getting screened for prostate cancer or not, or whether or not you have a better chance of surviving a cancer diagnosis. Addressing this inequity will require concerted action from federal, provincial and territorial governments, informed by the experiences of health care providers across the cancer care continuum, patients, caregivers, and equity-deserving groups that are navigating the cancer care system in different parts of the country.
More silos will only make these challenges worse. The federal government working with jurisdictions can tackle important priorities to improve cancer care in Canada, with particular attention on increasing the availability of primary care for all Canadians, improving data collection, bolstering health human resources, supporting team based interdisciplinary holistic care and ensuring equitable access to screening and treatment for all Canadians, no matter where they live.
Important signs of progress will be when we see more Canadians diagnosed with early-stage cancer, fewer diagnosed with late-stage cancer, and those living with cancer not just surviving but thriving. This will mean our cancer care system is truly responsive to the needs of Canadians it serves.
1https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230516/dq230516c-eng.htm
2Angus Reid, September 2022, https://angusreid.org/canada-health-care-family-doctors-shortage/
Dear Canada’s Premiers:
As you convene in Winnipeg on July 10-12 to discuss pressing issues facing people living in Canada, we urge you to prioritize the hundreds of thousands of Canadians affected by delays and gaps in screening, diagnosis and treatment of all forms of cancers.
Cancer care has reached a crisis point because of widespread disruptions of screening, treatment and surgeries prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Statistics Canada, in 2020 diagnosis of cancer cases dropped 12.3% lower than the average annual rate over the previous five-year period,1 which is likely due to difficulty in accessing primary care services and underscreening. This means more patients presenting with advanced stages of cancer, requiring aggressive treatments and more surgeries, adding more pressure and costs to already overburdened health systems.
In fact, recent research shows that 21,247 additional Canadians could lose their lives to cancer due to pandemic-related delays over the next decade.2 These are lives that can be saved if you take urgent action now to address the gaps in screening, diagnosis, treatment, and surgeries.
Already in Canada we are seeing important and innovative initiatives to help the Cancer care system such as the recent changes in New Brunswick to support cancer patients and British Columbia’s new Cancer Plan. We welcome these initiatives, but more work is needed across Canada. More collaboration across stakeholders and decision makers is also needed and we are pleased to see initiatives on this front, such as the recent launch of the all-party federal caucus on cancer.
To ensure people living in Canada have timely, equitable, and quality access to appropriate cancer care, we have come together to form Cancer Action Now, a national alliance of patient organizations, professional associations, and life sciences companies who are witnessing the magnitude of the problem in our cancer care systems faced by those living with cancer.
We are calling on premiers to address the issues in our cancer care systems so that those living with cancer have a chance to live longer, better lives than anywhere else in the world. We need cancer action now.
We call on all premiers to:
Only with concerted, coordinated action can we close the widening gaps in cancer care and save lives. The above calls to action build on the fundamental and structural reforms needed in Canada’s health-care system, especially around health data, primary care access, and healthcare workforce as outlined by many other stakeholders.
Please commit to taking cancer action now.
Sincerely,
Cancer Action Now Alliance Members
CC: Provincial and Territorial Health Ministers
1https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230516/dq230516c-eng.htm
Canadians with cancer are asking “Where is cancer?” in the proposed health care plan announced yesterday
As the Prime Minister and Premiers convened in Ottawa yesterday to discuss much-needed reforms to Canada’s health systems, cancer patients and stakeholder groups across the country are concerned by the lack of focus on cancer care outcomes in the new proposed plan.
Cancer Action Now, a national coalition of 30 health organizations, is sounding the alarm and urgently calling on governments to address the gaps in cancer care. This includes ensuring people in Canada have access to timely cancer screening, treatment and surgeries, no matter where they live.
While the discussion at the Federal-Provincial-Territorial meeting focused on funding and shared indicators for the health system more broadly, we urge provincial governments to make cancer a priority and ensure that cancer is a focus when rolling out provincial action plans on priority areas including: access to primary care, reducing surgical backlogs, access to mental health services and health data.
Linda Rouillard, a mom of three from Quebec, who was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer after her pregnancy, described the challenges she experienced in dealing with the cancer care system:
“I called about five clinics. Some told me that they were no longer taking patients because there were already too many requests due to the delays caused by the pandemic. I had to beg to be put on a waiting list as I was told that I would not get care for another two and a half months. I felt that I had run out of options. Next step was either finding a private clinic or flying to another province to get the care I needed, both of which were very expensive options. I had to fight for the request, and I had to fight to be seen earlier.”
We know that survival rates improve when cancer is detected early and the patient receives timely treatment. Linda is one of the many Canadians who have been let down by a crumbling cancer care system. Cancer was already the leading cause of death in Canada before the pandemic, but now it is estimated that an additional 21,000 lives will be lost needlessly by the end of the decade due to the backlog of cancer screenings, treatments and surgeries that built up during the pandemic.i
Andrea Knox, Director-at-Large, External Relations for the Canadian Association of Nurses in Oncology and a Cancer Action Now member, said:
“While an increase in funding will help bolster health system capacity, it is also vital to map indicators, set benchmarks and ensure transparent data is collected against them to measure health system performance. This will ensure that evidence-based policy decisions are being made for Canada’s cancer care system and assess if the funding is having a desired impact in areas such as workforce planning and timely and equitable access to screening, diagnosis and treatment across Canada.”
The pandemic has shown us the power of coming together and working for a common cause. The meeting yesterday was the first step in the right direction; however, this collaboration needs to continue with patients, caregivers, and organizations like the Cancer Action Now alliance. Governments must make cancer a priority in the proposed 10 year health plan to save lives.
About Cancer Action Now:
Cancer Action Now is a national alliance of patient organizations, professional associations, and life sciences companies who are witnessing the magnitude of the problem our cancer care systems and its patients are facing in light of the pandemic. We have come together to call on governments to address the issues in our cancer care systems so that Canadians with cancer have a chance to live longer, better lives than anywhere else in the world.
For media inquiries, please contact:
Charlotte Webber
Charlotte.webber@hkstrategies.ca
613-691-2195
Let’s Put Cancer at the Top of the Agenda
Dear Federal, Provincial and Territorial Health Ministers:
As you convene to discuss Canada’s healthcare system crisis, we urge you to prioritize the hundreds of thousands of people living in Canada affected by delays and gaps in screening, diagnosis, treatment and surgery of all forms of cancers across the country. 2022 may well be the worst year for cancer deaths in Canada due to the widespread disruptions on cancer screening, diagnosis, treatment, and surgeries during the pandemic. It is estimated that 21,247 additional Canadians could lose their lives to cancer due to pandemic-related delays over the next decade. Many of these lives could be prolonged or spared if you collectively take urgent action to address the gaps in screening, diagnosis, treatment, and surgery resulting from both the deterioration of our healthcare systems in recent years and the interruptions in cancer care systems from the pandemic.
That’s why we have come together to form the Cancer Action Now Alliance, a national alliance of patient organizations, professional associations, and life sciences companies that are witnessing the magnitude of the problem to the public, to those Canadians living with cancer, and to our own cancer care systems. We are calling on governments to address the issues in our cancer care systems so that people living with cancer have a chance to live longer, better quality lives.
We call on all Health Ministers to:
Only with concerted and coordinated action can we make up for lost ground and begin to close the widening gaps to improve health outcomes and save lives.
Please commit to taking cancer action now.
Sincerely,
The Cancer Action Now Alliance
1https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijc.33884
2ibid