The Canadian Museum of Civilization’s new online exhibition “Making Medicare: The History of Health Care in Canada, 1914-2007” chronicles the evolution of the universal health-care system. From the public health initiatives of the First World War to the recent provincial wait time agreements, the site presents a detailed look at the forces that shaped medicare, including geography, social issues and public opinions, and in the process provides a broad record of life in 20th-century Canada.

A new website (www.hcic-sssc.ca) provides a decade’s worth of data on Canadians’ perceptions about the state of health care. The Health Care in Canada surveys, which were conducted annually from 1998 to 2007, polled five groups — doctors, pharmacists, nurses, health-care managers and the general public — about their opinions on a variety of health-related topics, such as access to care and private insurance. The site gives an overview of the major trends in each area, along with detailed yearly results and raw data. Here are some highlights:

The Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing has released The Case for Healthier Canadians: Nursing Workforce Education for the 21st Century, a white paper that addresses the current state of nursing education in Canada. It provides an overview of the major trends and challenges in nursing education and offers ideas for both curricula- and investment-based solutions. It also reaffirms the need for registered nurses to be educated at the baccalaureate level, saying that “research demonstrates unequivocally that patient safety and outcomes are dependent on the educational preparation of professional nurses.”

The Canadian Medical Association wants to stimulate renewed discussion on health-care reform with Health Care Transformation in Canada: Change that Works. Care that Lasts. The report prescribes major changes to the health system that CMA believes will ensure its long-term sustainability. “Our system needs to be massively transformed and the CMA is engaging Canadians to discuss and debate the hard choices we will need to make as a nation to move our system forward,” said Dr. Anne Doig, CMA’s president.

In The Sustainability of Medicare, the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions sheds new light on a perennial debate: it examines the future sustainability of the Canadian medicare system, paying particular attention to changing health needs and their associated costs. CFNU suggests that solutions brought forth by proponents of privatization would actually increase system costs and widen access and service discrepancies between affluent and more vulnerable populations.