Healthcare is a provincial jurisdiction, but the federal government provides a lot of the funding and attaches strings - the chief one being participation in the "Canada Health Act" which mandates a ban on private pay for publicly-insured services.

It's a bad system and since that article was published public sentiment has been worsening: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/first-reading-canadian-...

Most people who have glowing things to say about it have had minimal interactions with the system. The overall data shows predictable results when government intervention completely skews market incentives: the patient experience blows, administration is bloated to hell, it lacks capacity, and it bleeds healthcare professionals across the border where pay and working conditions are generally better.

The fact that anyone defends the system as it's currently designed is honestly baffling to me. If you took another essential industry - food - and applied similar incentives (any food paid for by government can't be purchased privately, government sets the rates, etc.) most people would correctly predict it would be disastrous.