Dr. Alika Lafontaine

Indigenous Physician | Healthcare Leader and Changemaker

Public Policy Forum Award Speech

Named Maclean’s top Healthcare Innovator, Dr. Alika Lafontaine has been at the epicentre of healthcare system transformation for almost two decades. He is the first Indigenous physician and the youngest doctor to lead the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) in its 156-year history, and the first Indigenous physician to be listed on The Medical Post’s 50 Most Powerful Doctors. An experienced health leader known for driving major policy and system changes in collaboration with multilateral partners, Lafontaine speaks eloquently and passionately on the forces reshaping healthcare and society, with a focus on AI and health system transformation, leadership through crisis, reconciliation and Indigenous health, and the emotional and structural dynamics that rebuild trust and drive meaningful change.

Lafontaine’s leadership has spanned some of the most significant health transformation efforts in Canada. From 2013-2017, he co-led the Indigenous Health Alliance, one of the most ambitious Indigenous health system initiatives in Canadian history. Representing more than 150 First Nations, the Alliance successfully secured $68 million in federal funding and was recognized by the Public Policy Forum, where Lafontaine received the inaugural Emerging Indigenous Leader Award presented by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Building on this work and his personal experiences within healthcare, Lafontaine went on to found Safespace Networks, an anonymous learning platform that enables patients and families to safely report racism and healthcare harm. Now active in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Ontario, Safespace Networks supports users navigating fragmented and confusing health reporting processes while helping health systems understand and respond to issues that often go unreported.

played a central role in securing the largest federal healthcare investment since 2004, advancing major reforms in physician credential recognition and strengthening national collaboration on health data governance and health human-resource planning. These reforms helped catalyze the broader movement toward streamlined licensure now emerging across several provinces and territories. Under his leadership, the CMA also adopted a long-term Indigenous health goal and initiated a national apology process addressing the maltreatment of Indigenous patients in Canada’s healthcare systems. He continues to support this reconciliation work as the CMA’s Indigenous Advisor in Residence.

Grounded in mixed Indigenous ancestry — Métis, Oji-Cree, and Pacific Islander — Lafontaine completed his medical degree and anesthesia fellowship at the University of Saskatchewan before moving to northern Alberta, where he has spent most of his clinical career. He has been named one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 and is the youngest recipient of the Indspire Award. He is also the author of The Outrage Cure, a forthcoming book on how cycles of anger and outrage erode trust and how individuals and systems find their way back to connection and change.

Speaking topics

Presentations listed below include in-person and virtual keynotes, as well as workshops, fireside chats, and other presentation formats.

Move Fast and Break Trust: What Happens After the Social Contract Dissolves

Across sectors, rapid innovation and accelerating disruption are reshaping the expectations that once held professionals, institutions, and the public in alignment. As old structures lose coherence, the social contracts that defined these relationships begin to fracture. Trust dissolves first, followed by shared purpose, roles, and the assumptions that made collaboration possible.

In this keynote, Dr. Alika Lafontaine examines why social contracts break down, what leaders often miss as trust erodes, and how new power dynamics emerge during periods of rapid system change. Drawing on lived experience, national leadership roles, and reconciliation-focused approaches, he maps the emotional and structural forces that shape behaviour when systems are destabilized.

Rather than viewing disruption as a collapse, Lafontaine reframes it as a moment of renegotiation. He illustrates how leaders can rebuild belonging, re-establish alignment, and create the conditions for collaboration in the space between what used to work and what comes next. This keynote offers a clear framework for navigating uncertainty, restoring trust, and designing the next social contract before it forms by default.
The Outrage Cure: Understanding Anger to Heal Relationships, Systems, and Self

Anger and outrage are everywhere in today’s workplaces, communities, and institutions. They disrupt collaboration, strain relationships, and erode trust — but they also reveal something deeper: unmet needs, unresolved loss, and the breakdown of shared understanding. When left unaddressed, these emotional states can calcify into indifference, disengagement, and organizational decline.

In this keynote, inspired by the insights behind Dr. Alika Lafontaine’s forthcoming book The Outrage Cure, audiences explore how emotional turbulence emerges, why it escalates, and what it signals about the health of relationships and systems. Lafontaine introduces accessible frameworks that help leaders and teams interpret emotional tension not as a threat, but as a pathway to alignment.

Through lived experience, practical guidance, and real-world examples, this keynote illustrates how to create environments where people feel seen, heard, and safe enough to engage authentically. Participants learn how to navigate conflict with clarity, foster emotionally intelligent cultures, and transform distress into trust, accountability, and collective well-being — within organizations, systems, and themselves.
Leading in the In-Between: How Great Leaders Navigate the Space Where Old Systems End and New Ones Begin

Leadership is most difficult in the “in-between” — the period when old systems are losing coherence and new ones have not yet taken shape. In these moments, familiar structures stop working, expectations shift, and teams can feel ungrounded. Yet this transitional space is also where creativity, alignment, and transformation become possible.

In this keynote, Dr. Alika Lafontaine draws on systems theory and real-world leadership experience to explain why organizations struggle during transition and what leaders must pay attention to when the future is still emerging. He explores how outdated assumptions distort decision-making, how structural forces shape behaviour, and why clarity is hardest — but most essential — when the path forward is not yet visible.

This keynote offers a roadmap for leading with steadiness, insight, and influence in the space between what is ending and what has not yet begun. Audiences will leave with practical tools for mobilizing teams through ambiguity, challenging entrenched narratives, and recognizing early signals of change.
Crisis is the Catalyst: What Truly Drives Reconciliation and System Change

Institutions often commit to reconciliation and equity in principle, but meaningful change rarely happens through good intent or aspirational strategy; it takes root in crisis. Drawing on historical examples of reconciliation, including the Canadian Medical Association’s multi-year journey to a national apology, Dr. Alika Lafontaine offers an unflinching look at how crises expose fractures, intensify pressure, and force organizations to confront the status quo.

This keynote goes beyond high-level commitments to examine the emotional, political, and structural dynamics that shape institutional responses when the pressure to change becomes unavoidable.

Through practical insights drawn from lived experience and national system transformation, Lafontaine reveals the leadership actions that rebuild trust, create conditions for reconciliation, and convert crisis into durable, transformative change.
The Future of Everything: Trends, Systems, and the Next Era of Change

Trends that once unfolded over decades now reshape entire sectors in real time. Breakthroughs in technology — from AI to data-driven systems — create unprecedented possibilities, but the forces that determine whether innovations succeed or fail remain deeply human. As systems evolve and assumptions shift, leaders must learn to read not only the signals of change, but the social, cultural, and structural forces that shape how those changes take hold.

In this futures-focused keynote, Dr. Alika Lafontaine explores how technology, governance, culture, and mental models interact to propel or derail transformation. He unpacks the dynamics that accelerate disruption, the path dependencies that restrain it, and the patterns that help leaders distinguish fleeting hype from meaningful trendlines.

Audiences learn practical frameworks for interpreting emerging trends, understanding the systems behind them, and anticipating how future scenarios may unfold. This keynote equips leaders with the insight needed to prepare their organizations for the next era of transformation — one defined not just by technological possibility, but by the human decisions that shape its impact.
Passing the AI Threshold: Trust, Safety, and the Future of Human-Machine Collaboration

AI is transforming clinical decision-making, professional identity, and workflow design faster than healthcare systems can adapt. The stakes are high: as automation accelerates, the consequences of error, bias, or misplaced trust become deeply human. Yet the defining challenge of this moment is not the technology itself — it’s trust. As clinicians and institutions rely more heavily on machine-generated guidance, they must confront how AI reshapes expectations, authority, and the social contracts that underpin professional practice.

Drawing on healthcare as a proving ground for high-risk AI adoption, Dr. Alika Lafontaine examines the wider implications for every sector navigating similar transitions. He explores how algorithmic tools redistribute responsibility, how hidden assumptions become encoded into automated processes, and why trust fractures when technology evolves faster than governance, safety structures, and workforce readiness.

This keynote offers a human-centered roadmap for navigating AI’s opportunities and risks, enabling organizations to build environments where people and intelligent systems collaborate effectively and responsibly. Audiences will gain a practical understanding of what leaders must do to ensure safe, ethical, and equitable AI deployment while maintaining transparency, accountability, and psychological safety.