Good morning. Wendy Cox in Vancouver this morning.
Provincial budgets rarely contain the unexpected. By the time they are released, governments usually have highlighted the goodies in some other, stand-alone way. This year’s decision to funnel more money into housing, to introduce a tax on those who try to flip houses within two years for a profit, and the measures aimed at affordability were all reliably telegraphed beforehand.
The government’s budget provision to publicly fund one cycle of in-vitro fertilization treatment beginning next April, was a rare surprise.
Finance Minister Katrine Conroy became emotional while discussing it. She noted the measure will be available to everyone, regardless of income, “who they love, or whether they have a partner.” And it holds the promise of being transformational for some families, as Andrea Woo reports this week.
Andrea spoke to Kim Santos, who, with her husband, managed to conceive after seven years and nearly $80,000 spent on fertility treatments. Her husband, an electrician, worked in Northern Alberta for weeks at a time to supplement his wife’s income as a teacher. He slept in shady motels, camper trailers and crawl spaces to save every penny possible. Ms. Santos tried all means to boost her fertility: Chinese herbs, naturopaths, yoga, massage, pomegranate, Brazil nuts.
The first cycle was $20,000, and worries about debt and failure hung over the couple for years until they resigned themselves to a life with a dog. But after going through what their counsellor called “a closure cycle” with their last effort, Kim learned she was pregnant.
“I still sometimes look at my son and think, ‘Are you real?’ " Ms. Santos said. “I’ll ask him to his face, like ‘Are you sure you’re real?’ And he just gives me the sweetest little smile, like, ‘Of course, mom. I’m right here.’ "
Ms. Santos called B.C.’s announcement “incredible news,” and said it would have made a world of difference to her family had their first IVF cycle been covered.
With the funding, British Columbia comes into line with other provinces and some of them, especially Ontario and Quebec, have been covering one cycle of IVF for years. In fact, Quebec’s early, generous, program had to be scaled back due to skyrocketing costs.
In 2010, Quebec became the first jurisdiction in North America to cover the costs of IVF for couples unable to conceive on their own. The program then funded three cycles of the procedure, though it did not cover the medication needed for IVF, which are often paid by private insurance and run into the thousands of dollars. A 2015 study of the first two years of the program found 246 babies were born to women 40 and older. Researchers found that each live birth achieved through IVF for 40-year-old women, and using their own eggs, cost the government $43,153, a figure that increased exponentially with age, reaching almost $104,000 for 43-year-olds.
Quebec has since scaled back its program to cover only one cycle. Ontario started funding one cycle for patients under the age of 43 in 2015. Manitoba and Nova Scotia both cover up to 40 per cent of the cost of fertility treatment for a maximum yearly credit of $8,000.
Prince Edward Island, which does not have an IVF clinic, offers up to $10,000 in funding based on family income for treatment elsewhere. New Brunswick offers a one-time reimbursement of $5,000, while Newfoundland and Labrador, which also lacks an IVF clinic, provides up to $5,000 per cycle, for up to three cycles, for out-of-province treatment.
Alberta, Saskatchewan and the territories do not have any publicly funded IVF programs.
Statistics Canada data from January show Canada’s fertility rate fell to a record low in 2022, with B.C.’s rate being the lowest in the country. At the same time, more British Columbian women aged 40 and older are having babies.
Caitlin Dunne, clinical associate professor at the University of British Columbia and co-director at the Pacific Centre for Reproductive Medicine, said infertility is a disease and a public-health issue, and called it “validating” for the B.C. government to help fund IVF.
“Fertility is not just a women’s issue; in fact, up to 50 per cent of infertility is due to male factors,” she said. “So this is both a men’s and women’s issue.”
This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.
Wendy Cox