Brian Day

Brian Day , (born January 29, 1947) is an orthopedic surgeon and health researcher in Canada, a past president of the Canadian Medical Association, and a prominent, sometimes controversial advocate for expanding private options within health care in Canada, including the use of non-government health insurance alongside the publicly funded system.

Day is also internationally recognized for his pioneering work in arthroscopic sports surgery. In 2023 he became the first orthopaedic surgeon inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame, which described him as a world leader in the field. That same year he was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, and in 2025 he received the King Charles III Coronation Medal. in Vancouver, British Columbia, Day was a spokesperson for a high-profile, multi-year and ongoing lawsuit against the provincial government, Cambie Surgeries Corporation v. British Columbia (Medical Services Commission), that ended in 2023 and is sometimes cited publicly as 'The Day Case'.

In 2025, he published My Fight for Canadian Healthcare: A Thirty-Year Battle to Put Patients First, a memoir reflecting on his legal and professional battles for private care in Canada.

Early life and education Day was raised in Toxteth, a working-class area of post-war Liverpool, England. He was the eldest of four children in a family with strong Labour views. Both his mother and father were socialists. His father, a pharmacist, was killed in 1981 by hooligans looking for drugs during riots in the neighbourhood. In 2004, at the invitation of orthopaedic surgeon Antonio Castro, he travelled to Cuba to teach arthroscopic techniques and was made an honorary member of the Cuban Orthopaedic Association. The Arthrobot system was capable of responding to the surgeon’s voice commands to manipulate and position the patient’s limb during orthopedic surgeries.

From 1970 to 2014, Day wrote more than 150 scientific articles or book chapters, in areas of orthopaedics and arthroscopic surgery / sports medicine, and on the topic of health policy.

Medical association leadership (Canada and North America) Day is a founding member and was 2004 president of the Arthroscopy Association of North America, being the second Canadian elected to that position.

In August 2006, Day was elected president of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) for the 2007/08 term, despite a challenge at the convention floor by another British Columbian physician (whom Day had beaten in the nomination process) regarding Day's views about for-profit health care. Day states that his advocacy as president of CMA was for a hybrid public-private system, not a full replacement by private hospitals. The CMA policy drafted in 2007 was "When access to timely care cannot be provided in the publicly funded system, Canadians should be able to use private health insurance to reimburse the cost of care obtained in the private sector." In May 2016, Day was defeated 1,896 to 1,674 votes by Trina Larsen Soles in the election for the 2017–18 Doctors of BC presidency.

Day is the longest serving member of the editorial board for the BC Medical Journal. He is referred to as "Dr. Profit" by opponents who believe his legal challenges will threaten Canada's publicly funded medicare system, and Prophet by supporters for his advocacy of a role for patient choice and the right to obtain private insurance in the face of long government wait lists for care.

Day has argued many Canadians are being hypocritical towards private healthcare, because 70 per cent of Canadians buy healthcare insurance. Many with such insurance themselves claim to oppose private healthcare, while embracing it for themselves. The other 30 per cent of Canadians who cannot afford the extra healthcare insurance receive poorer access to care.

Day cites the Canada Health Act of 1984 being responsible for rationing of care that has resulted in over a million Canadians suffering on wait lists, and to more than 5 million without a doctor. In the 2005 Chaoulli v Quebec (AG) decision, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down prohibitions on private insurance in that province because it was an infringement of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms; the decision did not extend to the rest of Canada, but constitutional experts opined that it would certainly have major impact on similar cases brought to court elsewhere. Day also supports the end of block funding for hospitals and a change to "Patient Focused Funding" where revenue follows the patient. He advocates a patient-centered system with a greater role for competition in Canadian healthcare as a means to reduce waiting times and save government money by treating people before their condition worsens.

US 'Conservatives For Patient Rights' commercial controversy In May 2009, Day drew criticism after he was shown in a series of television ads for a US lobby group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights that opposed President Obama's health care reforms. Day appeared on the television program BNN on May 11, 2009, to clarify that he issued a letter distancing himself from the ad. He also pointed out that Obamacare was based on private insurance and private delivery, the opposite of what many Canadians believe in.

Cambie Surgery Centre and Constitutional Legal Challenge In 1995, Day founded Cambie Surgery Centre, a for-profit Vancouver clinic. Day is the facility's medical director, and one of its 40-plus shareholders. The Cambie Surgery Centre has 50 full- and part-time nurses and 125 doctors performing operations and other procedures for up to 5,000 patients a year, which may make it the busiest private hospital in Canada.

Day has said he decided to set up the Cambie Surgical Centre, which is non-union, after decreased government funding in the mid-90s cut his operating time at UBC from 17 hours a week to about six. The start-up was during the premiership of Michael Harcourt. To demolish an old nursing home and build a surgery centre on the site, Day needed to raise about $5 million.

In 2012, the British Columbia Medical Services Commission confirmed what the clinics had openly admitted to doing since 1996—namely allowing patients, in violation of the Medicare Protection Act, to spend their own funds to jump the queue and access the clinic.

The Commission asked the Cambie Surgery Centre not to permit patients access to earlier treatment. The plaintiffs pointed out the constitutional challenge had been brought before the courts 3 years earlier. In the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the plaintiffs challenged the prohibition on patients using their own funds to access care, instead of receiving it in order based on medical priority. Specifically, they are challenging the ban on private health insurance to cover medically necessary care, and the ban preventing doctors from working in both the public and private health systems at the same time.

Proponents of publicly funded healthcare in Canada argue that this legal challenge against medicare could set a dangerous precedent. Proponents of for-profit care argue the opposite and that patients will be protected from the dangers of waiting for care. In the Chaoulli decision (2005) the Supreme Court of Canada declared it was a fact that Canadians were suffering and dying on wait lists. It was expected that the case would, like the Chaoulli case, eventually be decided at the Supreme Court of Canada. A decision at this level would mean the outcome would be binding in all provinces and territories across the country. Some legal experts have described this case as one of the most significant legal challenges in Canadian history.

On September 10, 2020, Justice John J. Steeves of the Supreme Court of British Columbia (BCSC) handed down his 880-page decision, in which he found that the "impugned provisions do not deprive the right to life or liberty of the patient plaintiffs or similarly situated individuals." He said that there was a "rational connection between the effects of the impugned provisions and the objectives of preserving ... the universal health care system and ensuring access to necessary medical services is based on need and not the ability to pay." Justice Steeves ruled against legalizing private health insurance.

This decision was appealed to the BC Court of Appeal. On July 15, 2022, they dismissed the appeal. However, they cited many errors in the lower court’s findings and concluded: “Wait times in considerable measure flow from government rationing of health care” and “[the system] is intentionally under-designed in order to achieve fiscal sustainability.” They also found “that waiting inherently carries the risk of death.”

On April 6, 2023, despite having heard and overturned similar restrictions in the Chaoulli case, the Supreme Court of Canada refused leave to appeal without giving reasons.

In May 2025, Day’s book, My Fight for Canadian Healthcare: A Thirty-Year Battle to Put Patients First, was published by Sutherland books. 2014: Doctors of BC Don Rix Leadership Award 2023: became the first orthopaedic surgeon to be inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame in recognition of his international role in the management of sports injuries