The campaign for a national healthcare system was opposed by the Canadian business community for decades. Before the system was implemented in 1966, they cranked out all kinds of propaganda, claiming universal healthcare would lead to Soviet rule.

1965 - Among the most strenuously opposed was the notoriously anti-Semitic Social Credit Party. Public opinion was against them.

1965 - Nine months before the universal healthcare system came to be, comedian Dave Broadfoot joked, “It’s going to be very exciting if ... we have socialism in Canada. It’s going to be very exciting watching the U.S. marines arrive.”

Universal healthcare in Canada was first offered regionally. Some provinces instigated programs, other provinces did not. It was similar to the modern evolution of marijuana decriminalization in the United States. Saskatchewan was the first province to socialized healthcare...

The leader of Saskatchewan's Liberal opposition condemned the plan. He said, "In a country like ours, it is impossible to sell socialism. Knowing this the [provincial government] has planned a campaign which will employ the established tactics of Marx of arousing class hatred."

The liberal opposition said the new system would turn Saskatchewan into a “police state.” Premiere Tommy Douglas hired George Cadbury to advise on how to transition to the socialist model. Cadbury was a student of John Maynard Keynes and heir to the Cadbury chocolate egg dynasty.

Saskatchewan was the first place in North America with socialized medicine. Time magazine wrote of its cost effectiveness compared to the private model in June 1946: “Saskatchewan’s pinks had done a good job of keeping Saskatchewan out of the red.”

By the early 1950s, the Saskatchewan model was a clear success. Poverty stricken areas of the United States went through labor unions to request Canadian help in applying a similar system...

Fred Mott, deputy of health, was sent to the United States in 1951 to “set up a network of ten regional hospitals to provide health services to half-a-million people in the coal mining communities of Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia on behalf of the United Mine Workers."

Among the health system's economic advisers was Tommy Shoyama. Four years earlier he had been interned in a Japanese interment camp in Kaslo, B.C., where he published a newspaper featuring “information about internees and camp life.” The Canadian government banned the paper.

1953 - One of the earliest success stories of Canadian healthcare was the psychiatry program run by Dr. Humphrey Osmond. He implemented the first psychedelic therapy program in North America, administering LSD to cure alcoholism. It had a 75% success rate.

Six months into the program, Osmond's associate, Dr. Albert Hoffer said, "We have now treated sixty of them, and half are no longer alcoholic after one treatment [of LSD], so we do see that this drug has great potential for changing people.”

The founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill W., was so impressed with the results of Saskatchewan's socialized LSD program, that he drafted plans to expand A.A.’s 12-step program into a 13-step program. The 13th step being a dose of LSD.

1953 - The novelist Aldous Huxley was also impressed with the news about Canada's experimental healthcare system. He wrote Dr. Osmond a letter and the two struck up a correspondence. It was during these letters that Dr. Osmond coined a brand new term: "psychedelic."

Huxley wrote Dr. Osmond, “I am eager to make the experiment and would feel particularly happy to do so under the supervision of an experienced investigator like yourself.” Dr. Osmond flew from Saskatchewan to California in May 1953 and guided Huxley on his first psychedelic trip.

Aldous Huxley’s nephew, Francis Huxley, traveled back to Canada with Dr. Osmond. An anthropologist, he studied Saskatchewan's socialized medicine system and shadowed Dr. Osmond during the LSD sessions that treated alcoholics.

LSD treatments within the universal healthcare system were considered groundbreaking rather than controversial. Kyoshi Izumi, a local architect, was hired by the Saskatchewan government to design new mental health facilities. Dr. Osmond administered him LSD to inspire his designs

Izumi took LSD and walked through old, clinical hospitals while under its spell. "This helped him to eliminate features that might produce harmful effects on patients." He returned to the drafting table and several new buildings were constructed based on his designs.

Despite the success of the Saskatchewan model, it took another decade and a half for the national program to come to fruition. Propaganda from the business community continued to defy the evidence. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce insisted healthcare was "a threat to freedom."

One of the arguments was that national, universal healthcare would be a "curse'" that would surely remove the medical community's sense of "purpose and zeal"

Some hostile Canadian doctors promised to move away rather than work within a universal healthcare system. One doctor predicted, "There will be fighting in the streets before this thing is finished."

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