The intervenor coalition includes Canadian Doctors for Medicare, Friends of BC Medicare, Glyn Townson, who has AIDS, Thomas
McGregor, who has muscular dystrophy, and family physicians Dr. Duncan Etches and Dr. Robert Woollard, both professors at
the University of British Columbia.
A second intervenor group representing four patients also warned that the Charter challenge would lead to an inequitable health
system across Canada. “This case is indeed about the future of the public health care system, in its ideal and actual forms,”
said the group’s lawyer Marjorie Brown, according to a report in The Globe and Mail.
Cambie and its co-plaintiffs, who made their opening argument last week, say the BC law barring extra billing, so-called dual or blended practices and the use of private insurance for publicly
covered services violates Sections 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.