It was 20 years ago that the Alberta Premier’s Advisory Council on Health (known popularly as the Mazankowski Committee, after its chairman, Don Mazankowski) tabled its final report. I wrote the foreword for MLI’s series of essays lamenting the lost opportunity that the Committee, and Mazankowski himself, laboured so mightily to offer Albertans and Canadians. As a member of the Committee, I had a front row seat to one of the best and most stimulating conversations this country has seen about how to rescue its tottering but much loved health care system. Just as importantly I saw and appreciated Don Mazankowski’s inimitable leadership style.
“Twenty years’ worth of subsequent events have shown our recommendations to have been prescient, as this collection of essays shows. Those same events have equally shown the emptiness of the findings of the Romanow report (written contemporaneously to the Mazankowski report), whose recom –
mendations I always thought could be summarised as “nothing wrong with medicare that more spending won’t fix,” despite the fact that few other industrialised countries in the world spend as much on health care as Canada and yet they generally get better results (Commonwealth Fund 2021). I personally am convinced that there are no reforms to medicare that can succeed without
relying heavily on Maz’s Committee’s thinking, although obviously specific details can be different.
“When that reform finally happens, as surely it must, Don Mazankowski’s courageous leadership and abiding concern for the well-being of his fellow Canadians in the health care field will finally get the recognition they deserve. Canada could use a lot more Don Mazankowskis.”
