Virtually everyone in Canada knows someone who has been touched by Alzheimer’s disease.
Millions of Canadians have watched their loved ones slowly slip away from the ravages of dementia.
But now there’s a new drug, recently approved by Health Canada, that could give those with Alzheimer’s some precious extra time. It’s the first Alzheimer’s drug approved by Health Canada in some 20 years.
For those with mild dementia caused by early Alzheimer’s, the drug lecanemab (brand name Leqembi) won’t stop the disease itself from progressing, but it has been shown to delay its progress by about one year.
Lecanemab is a breakthrough treatment that actually modifies the disease — a first of its kind. It removes beta-amyloid, a protein that builds up in the brain as plaque and leads to cognitive decline.
Lecanemab represents a shift from symptom management to actually attacking one of the root causes of Alzheimer’s disease.
Patients still waiting for drug coverage
The drug itself has already been approved in more than 50 countries and regions, including the United States and Europe.
But in Canada, because of health-care bureaucracy, patients are still waiting to have lecanemab covered by their provincial health insurance plan.
Canada’s Drug Agency is still reviewing the drug, even though Health Canada approved the drug back in October 2025. And we won’t know Canada’s Drug Agency’s final recommendation until well after March 5, according to its own website.
Because provinces like Ontario wait for the Canada Drug Agency’s approval before covering the drug for patients, patients will have to pay out of pocket just to access lecanemab. But Canada’s Drug Agency’s recommendations are not actually binding; they are just a suggestion, so why create the unnecessary lag time for insurance coverage? If the provinces ultimately get the final say, why not just skip the redundancy?
In the United States, the drug costs over $26,000 a year, or more than $2,000 a month. And, according to medical experts, the cost will likely be similar in Canada until it’s covered by provincial health insurance plans, a cost that would be debilitating for most Canadians.
Sunnybrook hospital in Toronto performed the first patient infusion of lecanemab in Canada earlier this month, but notes that, because the drug is not covered by provincial health insurance plans, patients must pay fully out of pocket.
Bureaucracy harming patients
A London, Ontario area doctor has reported that roughly 70% of his patients who have early-stage Alzheimer’s could benefit from the drug, as they have signs of beta-amyloid protein buildup, so the percentage of Alzheimer’s patients who could benefit from this drug is quite high.
This is a clear-cut case of bureaucracy harming patients. If Health Canada has already approved the drug as safe and effective for use in Canada, why does the province of Ontario have to wait on Canada’s Drug Agency before approving its coverage under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP)?
What is even the point of the existence of Canada’s Drug Agency, if Health Canada already exists? Other than slowing processes down and making Canadian patients wait longer to access cutting-edge drugs, there doesn’t appear to be one.
The vast majority of Canadians can’t afford to pay over $2,000 a month out of pocket to access this drug, which could dramatically enhance one’s quality of life.
With Health Canada having already approved the drug, provincial insurance plans like OHIP could be covering the cost now, not waiting for a green light from a middleman that doesn’t seem to add anything valuable to the process.
The time for reform is now. It’s time to scrap the redundancy in Canada’s drug approval processes and stop providing politicians with excuses to delay the coverage of critical innovative drugs.
Canadians deserve access to cutting-edge drugs as soon as they are approved by Health Canada and they shouldn’t be left waiting in limbo for the outcome of a non-binding decision that appears to be adding no value and just prolonging access.
Alzheimer’s patients don’t have years to wait for Canada’s health-care bureaucracy to catch up with the rest of the world.
And the reality is, they shouldn’t have to.
