We need to understand that the Canadian constitution determines how the publicly funded health care system is organised in Canada. Under the Canadian constitution are the roles and responsibilities which are divided between the federal, provincial and territorial government.
It is mostly the provincial government who have the power to pass laws to govern the finance and the delivery of health services in their own respective provinces. The federal government are responsible for providing health services for the remaining areas or group of people who doesn't fall into the provincial category area.
The Canada health act has a list of criteria which the provinces must meet in order to receive annual finances for delivering health services in their respective provinces. This would also mean that not all provinces receive the same amount of finance money annually. Depending on the financial requirements of each province and whether they meet certain laid out criteria, most provinces are financed with varying different amounts of money each year.
How does the public funded health care system stay afloat and survive? It does so through federal, provincial and territorial taxes such as personal, corporate, sales, payroll and other revenue. Some provinces charges an annual premium to Canadians on their own province and the others does not charge any premium. In either cases, a refusal to provide necessary health Services is not denied to Canadian people who can't afford to pay for the health premium fees.
Coming to the question of how business interests dictate health policy in Canada, we need to understand what exactly is the Canada's health care system. Canada's health care system are essential a group of socialized health insurance plan which provides health coverage to all Canadians whether citizens or permanent residence. It is publicly funded and administered based on provincial and territorial level but within the framework guidelines set out by the federal government.
It functions very much like an employer health insurance plan, wherein some employees pays a monthly or annual insurance premium for health coverage while other companies pays entirely for their own employees health insurance coverage. If you apply this same principle to the Canada's health care system, you will get the whole entire picture of how health care system are delivered in Canada.
Those health care providers such as hospitals, family physicians, pharmaceutical companies, professional medical services, and all other eligible health services provider, receives their revenue from the provincial government public insurance plan for delivering health services to Canadians. They mostly are businesses that gets paid by the provincial government health insurance plan.
For example, you visit your family physicians for health services, the doctor swipes your health card and they get paid by the provincial health government insurance plan. Now, the doctor cannot charge whatever amount they want to. There are guidelines as to how much fees the doctor of a certain profession can charge. This prevents doctors from scamming their clients.
The provincial government usually does regulate their health policy according to its own business interests and that of the professional businesses. But all these are done under the guidelines set out in the Canada health act.
