Message to the Premiers from the Canadian Public about Healthcare:

Majority (63%) Believe Enough Money Could Be Saved Through Better Management to Fund the Health Services Required

Majority (56%) Blame Mismanagement by Those Who Run Our Healthcare System Today Not Increased Demand from People Using the System (39%) for Healthcare System Problems Today

Toronto, ON --Six in ten (63%) of Canadians agree that the best way to fix Canada's Healthcare System is to clean up mismanagement and inefficiency in the system and that enough could be saved through better management to fund the services that Canadians require. This contrasts with one-third (34%) of Canadians who believe that the best way to fix Canada's health system is to make people more personally responsible for the services they use, which could mean restricting access to some services or sometimes charging individuals a fee.

Further, a majority (56%) say that the mismanagement by those who run the healthcare system today are most responsible for the problems the system faces as opposed to 39% who blame increased demand from people using the system as the reason why there are problems.

When asked to evaluate Canada's Healthcare System and the quality of services it provides, 26% of Canadians rated it "excellent" (5%) or "very good" (21%), while the majority (64%) rated it "good" (41%) or only fair (24%). One in ten (9%) Canadians rated the Healthcare Systems and the quality of its services as "poor" (5%) or "very poor" (4%).

To put this in perspective, when Ipsos-Reid began tracking this question in May 1991, 26% said that the Healthcare System in Canada was "excellent" - today, four percent say so. In 1991, 13% said that the Healthcare System was "fair/poor/very poor" - today 33% says so. Today, Alberta residents give their Healthcare System the highest marks in the country (43% say it is excellent/very good), followed by Ontario (33%) and Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia at 21%. Atlantic Canada scores 19%.

These are the findings of an Ipsos-Reid/CTV/Globe and Mail poll conducted between January 21st, 2002 and January 24th, 2002. The poll is based on a randomly selected sample of 1000 adults. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within 177 3.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult Canadian population been polled. The margin of error will be larger within regions and for other sub-groupings of the survey population. These data were statistically weighted to ensure the sample's regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual Canadian population according to the 1996 Census data.

Majority (63%) Believe Enough Money Could Be Saved Through Better Management to Fund the Health Services Required

Six in ten (63%) of Canadians agree that the best way to fix Canada's Healthcare System is to clean up mismanagement and inefficiency in the system and that enough could be saved through better management to fund the services that Canadians require. One-third (34%) believe the best way to fix our healthcare system is to make people personally responsible for the services they use; possibly involving restricting access to some services and user fees.

• Women (67%) are more likely than men (58%) to believe that cleaning up the mismanagement and inefficiency in the system is the best way to fix our healthcare system.
  
• Least educated Canadians, those with less than a high school education (70%), are more likely than Canadians with university degrees (58%) to believe cleaning up mismanagement and inefficiency in the system is the best way to go.
  
• Canadians with a household income of less than $30k (71%) are more likely than those with a household income of more than $60k (59%) to say cleaning up mismanagement and inefficiencies is better way to fix the healthcare system than restricting access to services and introducing user fees.
  
• Quebecers (57%) and Albertans (57%) are least likely to choose the clean-up route and are most likely to think increasing personal responsibility for the systems through restricted access and user fees is best (40% and 38% respectively).
  

There are no significance demographic or regional differences among Canada when it comes to what they believe is most responsible for the problems in our healthcare system today: increased demand or mismanagement by those running the system.

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For more information on this news release, please contact:

Darrell Bricker
President and C.O.O.
Public Affairs
Ipsos-Reid
(416) 324-2900

Darrell Bricker For full tabular results, please visit our website at www.ipsos-reid.com.
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