2026 will be the year of provincial and territorial engagement, as well as public education!
You may recall that last fall we reached out to you not only to support our usual committees, which are more active than ever, but also to help with media engagement and representation in your respective provinces and territories. Well, this is already beginning to bear fruit thanks to you, dear colleagues, as you are helping us better prepare when we meet with provincial and territorial governments to assess access to care. As you know, the successive closures of labour and delivery units across our vast country are starting to have real consequences for women’s health.
With the goal of advancing one file at a time, following the publication of our clinical practice guideline on the management of early pregnancy loss, we have begun meeting with each province and territory to extend a hand and offer our support in implementing early pregnancy assessment clinics. The aim is to prevent women who lose a pregnancy in the first trimester from waiting for hours in emergency departments and miscarrying alone in hospital bathrooms. Our ministers of health should be pleased because, when they are functioning properly, these clinics save both time and money.
To our great surprise, some provinces are performing quite well, particularly Manitoba, where our colleague, Dr. Helen Pymar, established one of these clinics 10 years ago. It is truly gratifying to see all of this work come to fruition. Other provinces and territories, however, have yet to grasp that 51 per cent of Canada’s population are women and that appropriate services must be provided to them. These meetings are first and foremost intended to inform provinces that we will be speaking directly to women, educating them, providing them with materials to support their advocacy and encouraging them to meet with their elected representatives to push for implementation of these services.
Please take note of our upcoming public summits:
Early Pregnancy Loss Q&A Sessions
• English: Thursday, Feb. 19 at 7 p.m. (ET)
• French: Thursday, Feb. 26 at 7 p.m. (ET)
I also invite you to review the guideline on early pregnancy loss, as women will be asking you questions. Several effective models already exist; it is up to you to identify the one that works best and to demand it in your practice settings. During these summits, we will also present a small Canadian “scorecard.” There will be heroes and there will also be areas where major change is needed. I do not need to tell you that everyone knows someone who has lost a pregnancy and everyone understands the profound sadness that accompanies such a loss. With a fertility rate of 1.26 children per woman in Canada in 2024, it is hardly unreasonable to ask for better services, even without factoring in the cost of lost productivity at work. Canadian women want to contribute to a strong Canada, to move forward and to return to work with psychological support when needed.
There is also the issue of access to medical management of pregnancy loss, which on paper is freely available across the country (except in Quebec, where Mifegymiso is only covered for induced abortion). We were surprised to learn that some pharmacies in certain parts of Canada have conscientious objections and therefore do not dispense it at all. Yes, even in Canada in 2026. Unbelievable.
You can see where this is going: we want to help you secure the necessary budgets in your respective provinces and territories. Thank you to all of you who have contributed so much to preparing our files when meeting with provincial or territorial officials. If you are already doing this work and would like to inform us, testify or get involved further, please write to: accessforourpatients@sogc.com. Along the same lines, we are also working on clinical guidance related to surgical wait times.
Finally, my greatest Christmas gift was reaching a record 3,761 members by the end of December. We had dropped to 2,400 during the pandemic. That is 3,761 voices speaking out to defend women’s rights. Please join us if you have not already done so: renew your membership and make sure your credit card information is up to date. My small team is incredibly effective.
Dr. Diane Francoeur
FRCSC, MHCM, ICD.D
Chief Executive Officer
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