The Great Health Care Debate
Ladies and gentlemen, gather round! In this corner, weighing in with 11 years of Liberal government and nine years as Finance Minister is Paul Martin. He promises to make defending health care the "fight of [his] life" and pledges to reduce waiting times. Of course, as finance minister, he cut billions from health care funding and created the very waiting lists he promises to now fix.
And in this corner, weighing in as an economist with a couple of stints as a member of parliament and the champion who took over the Progressive Conservative Party is Stephen Harper. Trained in Alberta and coached by Ralph Klein and Preston Manning, he promises to spend even more than the Liberals to fix health care. Of course, he used to speak openly about privatization of the health care system, but he has smartened up since then. Privatization is so 1990s! Instead, let's take public funds and funnel them to the drug monopolies through the creation of a pharmacare plan! Now he's talking!
Standing outside the ring, desperately trying to get in is the man who promises to cure all health problems by using the practices perfected by NDP provincial governments, who solved the health care problems of all the citizens in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia! It's smiling Jack Layton! Of course, the NDP in Saskatchewan and Ontario shut down hospitals, in B.C., they slashed wages for health care workers and in Manitoba, the problems just keep getting worse, but if he could just get in to the ring, he'd score some knockout punches!
Ringing the bell, weighing in as a defender of the status quo for Quebec and a true friend of U.S. investment in all aspects of the Quebec economy, its Gilles Duceppe. He'll take his health care decentralized with no federal role and if he can't have an independent state to rule over, he'll settle for all the administrative powers to run his own personal fiefdom, thank-you very much!
They'll fight to the finish but the only losers here will be the Canadian people!