April 4 2025

On World Health Day, the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) is in solidarity with frontline health care workers across the country and around the world. This year’s theme, Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures focuses on maternal and newborn health. This campaign underscores how vital public health care is to ensure that all mothers, regardless of income, race, immigration status, location, disability, or social standing, have access to life-saving care during pregnancy, childbirth, and throughout the early years of their children’s lives.

Canada’s universal, public health care system has helped protect generations of mothers and babies. Thanks to our public system, Canada’s maternal mortality rate remains low at 8.5 per 100,000 births, and our infant mortality rate is 4.3 per 1,000 births according to the latest OECD numbers. Compare that to the United States, a country with a largely privatized health care system, where maternal mortality is more than double, at 21.0 per 100,000 births, and infant mortality sits at 5.4 per 1,000 births.

The evidence is clear: public health care saves lives. Yet today, Canada’s public health system faces unprecedented threats as we continue to see the public system suffer from underfunding and increased privatization.

As we approach the federal election, NUPGE is calling on all political parties to support World Health Day and strengthen public health care and to:

• Commit to protecting, strengthening and expanding public health care, including ensuring access to maternal and infant care services.
• Reject privatization and other false solutions which undermine our public health care system.
• Increase investments in maternal and child health, especially in rural, northern, and underserved communities.
• Ensure stable, long-term federal health funding that supports frontline health care workers to deliver quality health care and expand access to comprehensive care.
• Expand pharmacare and dental care to make them truly universal, comprehensive and part of the public health care system.

Canada is facing the Trump attacks on our economy using illegal and unjustifiable tariffs to explicitly harm Canada’s economy. As Canada weathers the economic shocks Trump has created, all public services will come under attack. Now, more than ever, we must support

and strengthen our public health care system. Programs such as public health care fill Canadians with pride and strongly differentiates us from the United States.

This World Health Day, NUPGE honours the work of Canada’s health care workers who support their patients, including mothers and babies every day. And is asking Canadian voters to commit to electing leaders who will protect our public health care system for generations to come.