Leading Canada's public health-care to the free-market guillotine

By Stefan Christoff; December 22, 2011 - rabble.ca
http://rabble.ca/news/2011/12/leading-canadas-public-healthc...

National discussion in Canada on the Conservative government's new health-care financial ultimatum, a take-it-or-leave-it-style proposal, largely revolves around myths. First that financing alone is key to securing a sustainable public health-care system and second that free-market economic winds will provide sustainable guidelines, via GDP, for viable future government health-care financing.

A surprise delivery from Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to provincial finance ministers, over a fancy lunch-in at the Chateau Victoria Hotel this past Monday, the plan offers no space for negotiation toward collective national solutions for public health-care.

Essentially, the Conservative proposal works to strip federal responsibility in crafting, via national negotiations, coherent and sustainable health-care systems in Canada's provinces and territories. A clear move away from the flawed but important Canada Health Act and a political node to provincial governments already working to allocate federal health-care financing toward enhancing the corporate, for-profit sector role in delivering health-care, as already seen extensively in Alberta and Québec.

In reality, the Conservative plan will see six per cent health-care funding increases until the 2016-17 fiscal year, with little regulation over provincial governments increasing experimentation with public-private partnerships. Beyond 2016-17 the plan is to bind federal health-care spending to GDP growth, a fundamentally dangerous move toward codifying Canada's public health-care into capitalist economic terms.

Essentially, the Conservative deal stands as cash for health-care in the near future and uncertainty for the long term. Cash solutions are never long-term solutions to collective challenges, fast money and free market thinking will not solve the deep problems facing public health-care in Canada.

Beyond important calls for the Conservative government to negotiate viable terms to sustain public health-care in Canada, with politicians from provincial and territorial governments, also note that zero official opportunity for the people of Canada to contribute ideas toward the future of public health-care have been outlined.

In reality, a viable and democratic process in Canada, relating to public health-care's future, would encourage neighbourhood assemblies and participatory political processes coast-to-coast, similar to the general assembly model celebrated by the Occupy movement.

Certainly Conservative ministers, along with most politicians across party lines walking the halls of power in Ottawa, would have zero interest in launching a real democratic process on shaping the future of public health-care in Canada. However there is nothing stopping people and social movements from engaging on the issues and broadening national grassroots discussions on public health-care in Canada, noting that public health-care in Canada is rooted in social movement's demands voiced by past generations.

Consistent opinion polls illustrate deep support for public health-care in Canada, an issue that Conservative politicians worked to avoid addressing in substantial ways during the 2011 election campaign. In direct terms the recent Conservative health-care plan contradicts 2011 election claims, via Conservative politicians, to sustain Canada's health-care system, openly violating the majority opinion and trust of people in Canada.

Enforcing ideological policy without space for negotiation is quickly solidifying as a cornerstone to Canada's Conservative majority government, from moves to scrap Canada's gun registry, to the omnibus crime bill C-10, that is projected to greatly expand Canada's prisons, little political space has been granted for democratic process.

Next move is toward the public health-care system, first to close off negotiations and second to place government support for health-care in volatile economic winds.

Linking public health-care funding to GDP, announced to start in five years, is another salvo in a long-term campaign to derail public health-care institutions in Canada.

In moving health-care policy away from the domain of universal rights toward the fuzzy logic of the market place, Conservative politicians have taken a further step toward constructing a framework for privatization, branding public health-care as inherently tied to free market economics.

Certainly Canada will never see a Conservative proposal to link military spending to market fluctuations via GDP, given primary importance increasingly diverted toward the Canadian military in Conservative moves to reshape contemporary Canada's political identity toward militarism.

Linking national military financing to free market flux would certainly create financial future uncertainties for Canada's military, a monetary risk that Conservatives are willing to divert toward health-care but not military spending.

Public health-care in Canada is being addressed in 2011 by Conservative politicians as a financial annoyance, thrown to the provinces and territories in relation to free market winds, while in contrast securing billions in financing for U.S.-constructed military fighter jets is locked down without question.

In a time of economic crisis that is washing over global markets, a continuing crisis that will manifest in more severe ways on Canadian shores soon, this Conservative proposal will link public health-care financing to the whims of domestic and international financial winds, largely dictated by an economic logic that has led to our contemporary financial crisis.

In short, our public health-care system will suffer free market blues in the not-so-long future, if this 2011 Conservative plan on health-care is not struck down.

Shifting federal health-care spending in relation to GDP fluctuation, points to a much broader Conservative vision to reshape Canadian policies and institutions with a free market chisel that will only threaten our collective health and well being long into the future.

Now is the time to stand up and fight back, not only for public health-care, but for collective social policy not regulated by fundamentally unjust free market economics.

Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based writer, community activist and musician who contributes to rabble.ca & who is on Twitter.