On May 1, 2026, the federal government will force refugees and asylum seekers to pay out-of-pocket for essential health care including critical medications, dental care, mental health counseling, vision care, and physiotherapy under the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP). Send an email to decision makers now – we only have weeks left to stop this injustice.
The IFHP has provided basic health coverage to people fleeing war, genocide, torture, and persecution since 1957 while they wait to access provincial health care. Now, for the first time in the program’s history, refugees will face a $4 fee every time they pick up a prescription, and a 30% co-payment on dental, vision, counseling, and other supplemental care.
$4 doesn’t sound like much. But consider this: a refugee managing diabetes and hypertension may be on five or six medications. That’s $20–$24 every month just to pick up their prescriptions – and then there are additional costs now trauma support, glasses or seeing the dentist. For someone working a minimum wage job with no benefits, that’s impossible. Many refugees can’t work because work permits are often delayed. They won’t fill the prescriptions. They won’t go to the dentist. They won’t get the counseling they need after surviving trauma. They will get sicker and end up in emergency rooms that cost the government far more than prevention would have.
In 2012, the Harper government made similar cuts to the IFHP. Doctors staged walkouts. A federal court found the policy amounted to “cruel and unusual treatment” – a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The cuts were reversed. We cannot repeat that history.
These cuts also signal what’s coming. Refugee health is just the first program on the chopping block. When we allow the most vulnerable to be cut first, no one is safe.
Send an email now to demand the government reverse these cuts before May 1.