Beginning with the Dominion Provincial Conferences at the end of the Second World War Canada began to weave the fabric of health care as a right of citizenship. [...] The central question – advancing the health of Canadians in the face of rapid change in the biological and demographic drivers of health – is too often obscured in passionate debate on peripheral matters. [...] In the longer term, the issues should be about expanding the supply of resources – scientific, human, managerial, and educational – through the interaction of the health sector with the larger economy. [...] Not the interest of the insurer in financial results, not that of the physician, the nurse, or their professional bodies, not that of health policy professionals and system managers. [...] Reinvigorate public health For all the necessity of focusing on the individual patient, we cannot lose sight of the source of the greatest increases in “rectangularity” of the last 150 years: clean water, immunization, nutrition and hygiene education, and prevention programs such as smoking cessation and the management of hypertension.