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A cure for what ails Conservatives
Ottawa Sun ^ | June 10, 2005 | Michael Harris

Posted on 06/10/2005 2:39:42 AM PDT by Squawk 8888

Stephen Harper has been dealt his last political ace. Flaming out like a comet in the polls, help has arrived for the moribund Conservative leader. The Supreme Court of Canada has caught the Liberals cheating yet again -- this time on the touchiest issue of them all, the public health care system.

Just a year after Prime Minister Paul Martin touted the 2004 First Ministers' Agreement as a generational "fix" for medicare, the Supreme Court has stripped the rhetoric from reality. The bone has been laid bare and it is broken.

According to the court, governments (in this case the government of Quebec), don't have the right to impose a death penalty or undue pain and suffering on Quebecers by forbidding them access to private medical services which the public system can't provide in a timely way.

"The evidence in this case," the court wrote, "shows that delays in the public health care system are widespread, and that, in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care."

The court made another crucially important finding: "It cannot be concluded from the evidence concerning the Quebec plan or the plans of the other provinces of Canada, or from the evolution of the systems of various OECD countries, that an absolute prohibition on private insurance is necessary to protect the integrity of the public plan."

The Liberal government and their institutional puppets instantly did their best to diminish the reality of this epic decision, by far the most important court ruling in the history of medicare. Is it, as the federal government has shamelessly contended, a mere Quebec decision?

For a few days, yes. But nine out of 10 Canadian provinces have nearly identical legislation to the law that the Supreme Court has just struck down in Quebec. For Canadians who put their health and the reality of a broken system before Liberal fear-mongering, there will be instant court challenges to the government's hopelessly mismanaged monopoly in health care. That legislation will fall like dominoes from coast to coast, unconstitutional under Quebec's Charter of Rights and ultimately under Canada's too.

The same prime minister who used judicial decisions to justify changing the traditional definition of marriage now wants to trivialize and defy this profound ruling by the Supreme Court. Why? Because Canada's health care system has been, and always will be for the Liberals, a supremely political file. When the going gets tough, the Grits have a tried and true strategy: Scare the patients and scuttle the opposition. Unfortunately, the system Paul Martin wants to champion for political points is killing people and now the Supreme Court has actually said it.

One of the better stretchers that the prime minister has told in the wake of the high court's ruling is that the federal government didn't just spend $41 billion to fix things up back in 2004, he also worked to put "benchmarks" in place to see how much waiting times must be reduced. The fact is, the feds had to be dragged kicking and screaming into any kind of talks on wait-time benchmarks and virtually ignored the wise advice of the Wait Time Alliance of Canada, which includes the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Orthopaedic Association.

As for the $5.5-billion account that the feds set up and that the provinces can draw on to reduce waiting times, there is virtually no oversight to see that the money is actually spent for that purpose. Whatever it is spent on, no one will know for three years when a committee reviews the situation.

Is it any wonder that the Canadian Medical Association has called yesterday's Supreme Court decision "a stinging indictment of the failure of governments to respond to mountains of studies and years of research with real action for our health care system"? Giving back half of what you cut and writing a one-off cheque for the big headline is no substitute for a systemic, rather than political, fix.

Which brings me back to Stephen Harper, the man whose eyes gleam these days with intimations of his own demise. I am told that he is the smartest person on his staff, that he can't be managed, and that he prefers to give rather than take advice. To date, that approach has left him fighting to stay ahead of Jack Layton and the NDP in the opinion polls and so far behind the Liberals he can't even see the tail-lights of the getaway car.

Even young blue eyes can't deny he has been dealt some pretty good hands: Adscam, Liberal turncoat purchasing, dud subs, even, for a fleeting moment, a babe with a bank account bigger even than Stephen's strangely unsettling ambition to be boss. So far, he hasn't won a pot.

Now he has the Supreme Court of Canada and the Canadian Medical Association making the case that the guys who lied, cheated and stole are also killing us with a great idea that no longer works -- our dearly held and deeply troubled universal health care system. If Harper can't win this hand, that card he has just drawn will add up to aces and eights.


TOPICS: Canada; Culture/Society; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 06/10/2005 2:39:42 AM PDT by Squawk 8888
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To: GMMAC

(((.)))


2 posted on 06/10/2005 2:40:06 AM PDT by Squawk 8888 (Proudly Christian since 2005)
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To: Squawk 8888

Metaphor alert. This writer need a Strunk and White desperately.


3 posted on 06/10/2005 2:48:48 AM PDT by muir_redwoods (Free Sirhan Sirhan, after all, the bastard who killed Mary Jo Kopeckne is walking around free)
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To: muir_redwoods

Either that or some time with Ross Perot or Dan Rather. It'll show him the error of his metaphorical and similical ways quicker than a jackrabbit on a date!


4 posted on 06/10/2005 2:51:55 AM PDT by andie74 (If you eat pasta and antipasta, do they cancel each other out?)
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To: Squawk 8888
The Conservatives also back Canada's broken state-run Medicare system. If they don't offer a free market alternative, Canada's voters will have no real reason to ditch the Liberals. Why vote for a Liberal-Lite party when you can have the one already in office? The Conservatives have a decision to make and its their loss if they don't take advantage of the Canadian Supreme Court ruling to lay out a system that is truly responsive to Canadians' needs for safe, accessible, and high quality health care. That can't be addressed by simply throwing more taxpayers' dollars at the problem.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
5 posted on 06/10/2005 3:03:06 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: Squawk 8888
One of the better stretchers that the prime minister has told in the wake of the high court's ruling is that the federal government didn't just spend $41 billion to fix things up back in 2004, he also worked to put "benchmarks" in place to see how much waiting times must be reduced. The fact is, the feds had to be dragged kicking and screaming into any kind of talks on wait-time benchmarks and virtually ignored the wise advice of the Wait Time Alliance of Canada, which includes the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Orthopaedic Association.

As for the $5.5-billion account that the feds set up and that the provinces can draw on to reduce waiting times, there is virtually no oversight to see that the money is actually spent for that purpose. Whatever it is spent on, no one will know for three years when a committee reviews the situation.

It's difficult to believe there are still people who believe communism can succeed. No controls, poor controls...are Canadians really this stupid?

6 posted on 06/10/2005 3:06:44 AM PDT by laredo44 (Liberty is not the problem)
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To: Squawk 8888

Isn't this the same Canadian system that the Dems always praise ...?


7 posted on 06/10/2005 4:01:14 AM PDT by ken5050
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To: Squawk 8888

To paraphrase an old saying , "Nothing succeeds like secesh".


8 posted on 06/10/2005 5:13:27 AM PDT by PzLdr ("The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am" - Darth Vader)
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To: goldstategop

Exactly. Harper will do well if he starts behaving like a Conservative. I listened to Question Period yesterday and what I was hearing from the conservatives about health care makes me sick.


9 posted on 06/10/2005 6:26:03 AM PDT by youngtory (Liberals in Conservative clothing are bigger liars than the liberals themselves.)
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To: goldstategop

And I agree with every word of your post, but everyone here in FReepland has always known that. It's time for us Canuckleheads to get off our butts to do something, and it's time for you Yanks to watch and learn from both our successes and our failures.


10 posted on 06/10/2005 7:04:25 AM PDT by Squawk 8888 (Proudly Christian since 2005)
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To: youngtory
Harper will do well if he starts behaving like a Conservative.

Exactly, but I would like to expand on your point. We need to ask ourselves why we keep choosing men of principle to the the Party then surround them with image consultants and spin doctors to conceal their principles. I'd like to think that my choice for the leadership is still a man of principle and that he will act accordingly if only we'd let him. He cannot face down a biased media and clean up polluted cultural landscape if we are not willing to stand in his corner for the whole ten rounds.

I will be spending a lot of time getting involved with the party here in Ontario and raising a ruckus until the other members wake up. I sincerely hope that you will do the same in Québec.

11 posted on 06/10/2005 7:18:13 AM PDT by Squawk 8888 (Proudly Christian since 2005)
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To: youngtory
I listened to Question Period yesterday and what I was hearing from the conservatives about health care makes me sick

I'm sure that his performance made a lot of people sick. Send him an email telling him why it made you sick.

12 posted on 06/10/2005 7:20:11 AM PDT by Squawk 8888 (Proudly Christian since 2005)
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To: Squawk 8888
If Michael Harris had any established credentials as an authentic conservative, his advice to Harper might be worth something.

However, in spite of it possibly containing some small grain of truth, it's far more likely that his idea of an improvement over Stephen would be someone along the lines of Belinda Stronach and his supposedly constructive criticism merely part and parcel of the msm's on-going efforts to see Harper dumped for anything but conservative-friendly reasons.
13 posted on 06/10/2005 12:07:03 PM PDT by GMMAC (paraphrasing Parrish: "damned Liberals, I hate those bastards!")
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To: GMMAC

Which is why the only possible solution is to dump the image consultants and spin doctors and let the man stand or fall on his own merits. We chose him because we think he's fit to be PM but then we immediately try to hide his qualities.


14 posted on 06/10/2005 1:41:14 PM PDT by Squawk 8888 (Proudly Christian since 2005)
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