Maude Barlow and Linda Silas wrote in the Toronto Star:
“Fifty years ago on Canada Day, Saskatchewan passed the Medical Care Insurance Act, under the leadership of Tommy Douglas. This bold move birthed medicare and helped shape Canadian identity. The passage of medicare federally four years later did for Canada what the national railway did almost a century before. It helped define us from coast to coast.
…..
When Canadians are asked what institutions make them proud of their country, health care is consistently number one.”
The Harper Conservatives have:
“…unilaterally declared changes to the federal transfers to the provinces, reducing the federal share of health-care spending over time. Federal health-care spending on refugees and on the RCMP have been cut.”
They are also:
“…negotiating the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union which could increase the cost of prescription drugs by $2.8 billion a year. And ignoring all evidence, the prime minister himself is on record calling for more “experimentation”; in other words for-profit involvement in health care.”
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1219723—pull-together-for-public-health-care
