When rehabilitation is delayed or denied, we don’t just compromise individual outcomes — we increase health care costs, overwhelm emergency departments and deepen long-standing inequities.
Rehabilitation matters now more than ever. Our population is ageing. Chronic illness is on the rise. Yet access to rehabilitation continues to shrink. People are falling through the cracks — not because we lack evidence or solutions, but because we’ve failed to act.
Some of the most powerful, accessible and scalable solutions — like rehabilitation — are not hidden, but overlooked. They exist not at the margins, but at the heart of what people need to live well.
The mandate for our new government offers a chance to fix what’s broken. But only if we confront the depth of the crisis, listen to those on the front lines — patients, clinicians, researchers and advocates — and finally invest in care that enables people not just to survive, but to truly live.
If decision-makers won’t hear us now — when will they?
Aliki Thomas is associate professor in the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy at McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and a Canada research chair of education, practice and policy for evidence-based health care.