The Health Minister said much last week

Federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel laid out a series of positions on The Gritty Nurse podcast pointing to big changes underway inside federal–provincial health agencies.

The government is poised to accelerate drug and medical device approvals, AI-adoption, and changing models of care.

“Before becoming a leader, we have to be in the game. Right now, we are not.”

Michel criticized Canada’s regulatory culture as economically uncompetitive, describing Health Canada as overly restrictive:

“The posture of Health Canada was always protecting, protecting ... we added a lot of layers.”

She said she is personally driving deregulatory changes:

“This is why I am pushing my department… moving fast, removing the red tapes, facilitating the clinical trials ... And this is why I am on it like 24 hours a day.”

Violence in hospitals:

Asked by podcast host Amie Archibald-Varley whether the federal government would consider tying health transfers to nurse–patient staffing ratios or to provincial compliance with occupational safety standards, Michel replied:

“We had that conversation ... at my last FPT. And because we had a presentation from the nurses about harassment and violence. I think I already asked Health Canada to see how we can support them better by ... raising awareness.”

When pressed on whether provinces are failing to enforce existing occupational health laws, she said:

“I wouldn’t say that. I think it’s very complex.”

Men’s health strategy:

The Minister said she is launching a national boys’ and men’s health strategy “very soon,” and that the men’s health strategy will encompass digital harms.

“I am also including all this social media, gambling ... in my strategy, because it impacts a lot of young men.”

Though regulation of social media platforms formally falls to the Department of Canadian Heritage, a federal stance toward regulating the internet under the auspices of health would be a new development.

Rapid AI-adoption, unclear guardrails:

The Minister predicts that in a few years’ time, “we'll have a very different healthcare system.”

She said the government is very keen to prevent Canada from becoming a passive consumer of foreign tech:

“If we don't move fast and if we are not embracing it, we will be buyers but not innovators.”

The push for speed comes as international regulators are reporting dramatically increased malfunction rates for AI-enabled surgical devices compared to non-AI counterparts.

On the health workforce:

The Minister also discussed a permanent move away from physician-centred care:

“... we won't ever have enough doctors to take care of the health of Canadians. And now we have nurses that are well trained and who are doing the work and more and more, they will take their space.”

Canada Healthwatch reached the Minister’s office asking for clarification on regulatory approvals, AI oversight, and a federal stance on hospital safety. No response was received by publication time.
 

When people can’t access care, they get their answers elsewhere 
 

This year’s CMA Health and Media Tracking Survey makes that dynamic explicit. It found that roughly half of us now use AI tools for queries about our health.

David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data, told an audience at the Empire Club that while people increasingly use AI platforms to answer health questions, less than half of respondents believe the information they’re getting is accurate.

This trend, he says, is driven less by tech-optimism than it is by a lack of timely healthcare access. More than half of respondents said they go online to get their health information because they can’t reach a health professional.

A follow-up interview with Coletto clarified what the topline stats obscure.

He said respondents without a family doctor were six per cent more likely to say they’ve used ChatGPT or Gemini to answer health questions.

Equally revealing is a substitution pattern that predates AI entirely. Thirty-nine per cent said they’ve used medical advice they found online because they could not access a doctor or healthcare professional.

“This is not AI specific — this is broadly speaking,” he said.

AI is merely the newest accelerant on top of an already broken information ecosystem.

The survey also found that people who rely on AI are five times more likely to report harm from misinformation.

On that statistic, which drove much of last week’s coverage, Coletto said, “I don’t know if we can disentangle — is it correlation, is it causation?” Harms reported in the survey included delayed treatment, increased anxiety, and reduced trust in clinicians.

He noted younger respondents are also more likely to use AI tools, complicating efforts to unpack the dynamics around access and reported harms.

What is clear, Coletto said, is that simply ensuring patients have “access” to a family doctor isn’t good enough to truly solve these issues.

Provincial governments may be improving attachment metrics on paper, but the quality of that access matters too. “If they don’t have the time to spend with you,” he said, people “will continue to look for alternative sources.”

Nearly half of Canadians believe they are using AI in their health information searches, but Coletto suspects “far more” are likely being influenced by embedded AI tools without realizing it.

Sixty-nine per cent of respondents are skeptical of information they see online, even when it comes from trusted sources. A similar proportion say this has made them more skeptical of advice from their own healthcare providers.

Roughly nine in ten respondents agreed that both online platforms and governments have a responsibility to prevent health misinformation.

“I think this is the real sovereignty story,” Coletto said. “The strength of our news and information ecosystem is directly tied to our health, our well-being, and ultimately the resilience of this country.”

This view was reinforced by former U.S. CDC director Tom Frieden at last week’s Empire Club event.

Frieden said the most striking finding, despite the universality of Canada’s healthcare system, was how difficult it has become for people to access care.

He also urged Canadian policymakers “to think of misinformation as an epidemic” and to treat it as a public health threat.
 

 The WatchList™

What we’re watching for:

– Provinces optimizing care-attachment metrics while access quality declines
– Federal approval of AI-enabled medical devices outpacing oversight
– Faster drug approvals colliding with AI-accelerated pharma pipelines
– Online platforms becoming de facto first-line triage
– Social media regulation increasingly framed as a public health issue
 

^{Editorial direction: Nick Tsergas
Editor-in-Chief}