Michael Villeneuve RN, MSc, Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nurses Association, Ottawa ON 

Public Policy and Canadian Nursing: A Call to Political Action 

Public polls tell us that Canadians have higher expectations of health care than any other public  service. And the vast majority expect health care professionals, especially doctors, nurses, health  researchers and scientists, to exert a strong role in improving health care systems. The public has  high trust in nurses but also very high expectations: they want attentive, communicative, engaged  and individualized care—as well as informed political action—from their nurses. Steven Lewis has  argued that nursing’s combination of numbers, reputation and reach should translate into power  and influence over how health care is financed, organized and delivered. Yet politically, he says,  the profession punches below its weight … and the country is the worse for it. In his multi‐media  presentation today, Michael Villeneuve will use evidence, humour and experience to push all of us  in nursing to act as an effective political force in the effort to achieve better health, better care and  better value for Canadians. 

Learning Objectives: 

• Identify four leading population health trends that will impact Canadians, nurses and health  systems between 2018 and 2050.
• Describe the four main phases and related elements of a theoretical policy development  framework called the nursing policy cycle.
• Discuss the potential impacts of four examples of dynamics, actors, and forces that influence  health policy development and implementation. 

With four decades of progressive experience in the health-care system, Mike Villeneuve has worked in all the domains of nursing practice — direct care, administration, education, research and policy. He was appointed chief executive officer of CNA in June 2017. He leads the Ottawa-based organization’s team and operations as it works for its more than 139,000 members across all 13 Canadian provinces and territories. In his role, he is helping to implement a forward-leaning vision for professional nursing in Canada and the related services needed at CNA to support that transformation. He also serves as a member of the board of directors of the Canadian Nurses Foundation and, for 2017-2018, has been appointed as the virtual visiting scholar at the Dalhousie University school of nursing.

Since 2000, Mike has held teaching, executive and consulting roles with the federal Office of Nursing Policy, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Academy of Canadian Executive Nurses, CNA and its National Expert Commission, and the Lawrence S. Bloomberg faculty of nursing at the University of Toronto. Prior to returning to CNA as CEO, Mike led his own consultancy in health policy analysis, research, strategy and communication, serving governments, professional associations, unions and universities across Canada and internationally. During the 1990s, Mike was an educator and then patient care manager in the neuro intensive care and neuro/trauma/plastics units at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. One of three authors of CNA’s centennial history book, Mike also is author of Public Policy and Canadian Nursing: Lessons from the Field (2017), the first Canadian text focused on nursing and public policy. Mike lives in rural Eastern Ontario, where he is proud to serve as the Chair of the Board of Directors at Winchester District Memorial Hospital—one of Ontario’s highest-performing small community hospitals.