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CA-K244History

The Saskatchewan doctors’ strike of 1962

The Saskatchewan Legislative Building in Regina, photographed in 2025.
The Saskatchewan Legislative Building in Regina, photographed in 2025. Saskatchewan Legislative Building - Regina · Quintin Soloviev · Photo source · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0. Resized for display; item previews may be cropped. The image remains under the licence shown.
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When Saskatchewan’s Medical Care Insurance Act took effect on 1 July 1962, most of the province’s doctors went on strike for 23 days. Perhaps the most significant Canadian doctors’ strike of the 20th century, it exemplified conflicts in the development of medicare between state intervention and physicians’ independence, and between doctors as entrepreneurs and patients’ right to care regardless of income.

Scope & context

The strike and what it revealed, not national medicare legislation (see CA-K188 on Tommy Douglas).

Sources behind this record

1