Public Healthcare and the Limits to a Canadian-Style Inclusive Trade Agenda

Abstract

One of the key tenets of the Progressive Trade Policy agenda (PTA), set forth in the Canadian government’s Report of the Standing Committee on International Trade on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, was the safeguarding of the national government’s rights to regulate in the area of public services, including health services. However, the extent to which such an agenda protects public health care provision is far from certain. While the internationalization of health services has the potential to increase the supply of health services worldwide, a lack of global governance mechanisms to protect the health, and failure to take into account the risks to public health of the internationalization of health services may be highly detrimental to the health of trading nations. This paper draws on theoretical and empirical insights from both health policy research and international political science to analyze the potential effects of further trade openness on public healthcare provision in Canada and the UK.