History
The first implementation of public hospital care in Canada came at the provincial level in Saskatchewan in 1946 and in Alberta in 1950, under provincial governments led by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Social credit party respectively. The first implementation of nationalized public health care -at the federal level- came about with the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services act (HIDS), which was passed by the Liberal majority government of Louis St. Laurent in 1957, and was adopted by all provinces by 1961. Lester B. Pearson's government subsequently expanded this policy to universal health care with the Medical Care Act in 1966. Some have argued that these developments towards public national health care came as a result of the Saskatchewan government's health plan in 1961-1962 by Douglas and Woodrow Stanley Lloyd, who became premier of the province when Douglas resigned to become the leader of the new federal New Democratic Party, though the medicare legislation itself was actually drafted (and first proposed to parliament) by Allan MacEachen, a Liberal MP from Cape Breton.
Read more about this topic: Medicare (Canada)
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