Democratic backsliding rarely starts with major headlines—it starts with new costs, new rules, and new exclusions, and the federal government’s 2025 budget contains all three.
One place where that is particularly visible is in refugee policy, where the federal government has cut more than $2 billion from the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) through its adopted budget. These reductions included significant cuts to the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP), the federal health insurance program that provides healthcare coverage to refugee claimants, victims of human trafficking and family violence, protected persons in Canada and certain other vulnerable individuals who are not eligible for provincial health insurance.
Since May 1, 2026, the federal government has introduced a co-payment model to the IFHP, which requires beneficiaries to pay $4 for each prescription medication and 30 per cent of any supplemental services. For many, these new measures will mean having to choose between accessing essential health services, such as home oxygen devices that allow them to breathe, or having enough money to afford food.
The government has “rationalised programming” as a means of achieving economic objectives. Yet when applied to healthcare, “rationalising” does not simply reorganize spending. It determines who can access care and who cannot. The reality is that when policymakers deprioritize healthcare for some, they compromise the health of the entire country.
The federal government is presenting the IFHP cuts as a cost-saving measure, but is implementing them in the context of a broader political narrative that portrays refugee claimants as taking advantage of the system by receiving benefits funded by Canadian taxpayers. These claims are both wrong and harmful, and transform a public health issue into a debate about who deserves care. Refugee claimants are taxpayers who purchase goods and services, work jobs, rent homes, pay international tuition fees and contribute to the Canadian economy. They do not receive better healthcare than citizens do and their coverage is not comparable to that of the average Canadian. It more closely resembles the level of care available to citizens on welfare. Refugee claimants awaiting a decision on their claim also do not have access to provincial health cards and cannot access primary care physicians. A national survey of over 2,500 Canadian physicians showed that only about 26 per cent of Canadian healthcare providers were even registered to provide care under the IFHP program, further limiting refugees’ access to healthcare.
Although the government describes these co-payments as “modest,” the real consequences on program beneficiaries are not “modest” at all. The $4 prescription cost will quickly add up when patients require more than a single medication. Many will simply be unable to afford these added fees and skip necessary care. For supplemental services, paying 30 per cent of the fees will have the same effect. Ultimately, restrictions on access to preventive healthcare services will shift the demand to emergency rooms and more expensive healthcare costs in the long term.
Untreated physical and mental health conditions almost always escalate. We’ve seen this before. In 2012, when the federal government introduced similar IFHP cuts, a senior woman with diabetes and chronic kidney disease lost access to medication, leading to emergency hospital visits. Similarly, a teenager with PTSD lost his psychiatric support, resulting in long-term mental health needs. Two young children with asthma were repeatedly hospitalized because inhalers were no longer covered. Pregnant women skipped essential prenatal care, resulting in an influx of high-risk, emergency-room deliveries. Children with manageable infections developed severe complications, requiring prolonged ICU stays. Now a month since the cuts, community organizations, social workers, clinics and hospitals are already seeing the impacts.
In 2024-25, there were more than 16.1 million unscheduled emergency department visits reported in Canada compared to 15.5 million the year before, according to the most recent data from the Canadian Institute of Health Information. IFHP cuts will simply push that trend even further as it’ll be the only option for those unable to afford the co-payments. Withholding basic, preventive care from tax-paying residents does not save public money. It simply postpones the financial burden and forces the provincial government to pay exponentially as the issues inevitably escalate.
These changes are part of the federal government’s much larger goal of changing the Canadian immigration system.Federal legislators are also introducing and implementing other immigration crackdown bills—including Bill C-12, which increases enforcement, grants border agents additional powers, increases surveillance, and changes how refugee claims are deemed eligible and processed.
The implementation and communication surrounding these changes have already created uncertainty and distress among many refugee claimants, all while no longer having access to mental health services. Together, these changes create the impression of a government that is making refugee claimants suffer more while taking away the support systems that could help them.
Changes to the IFHP system are an early sign of a government quietly redrawing the boundaries of who gets to belong in Canada and who is to blame for the systemic failures. It is easy to scapegoat migrants and refugees as the reason for problems in Canada’s healthcare system. This type of scapegoating signals a very dangerous decline in Canadian values.
Canadians should actively oppose these cuts, not just for humanitarian reasons, but also because they have very real implications for all residents and citizens. When people are unable to access timely physical or mental healthcare, their needs do not disappear. They often worsen until they require costly emergency intervention, which places additional pressure on already overburdened emergency rooms and healthcare systems. For refugee claimants whose cases are accepted, untreated health and mental health concerns become a provincial responsibility. By choosing to invest less in care, we are accepting a lower standard of health for everyone.
Canada is at a crossroads. One path treats healthcare as a universal commitment and immigration as a shared responsibility shaped by law, evidence, and dignity. The other path treats care as a cost and a tool for exclusion.
The proposed cuts to the IFHP may appear limited, but their implications are not. They normalize a politics of exclusion, fear and division rather than one of inclusion, growth and care. Canada has already reversed this mistake once. The question now is whether it will recognize it again before the costs become irreversible. The health of our Canadian society is interconnected, and policies that deny care to some ultimately have consequences that affect us all.
