The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Paul's follies, Dave's problems Election promises continue to haunt the minority Liberal government. The province's health ministers continue to try to hold Paul Martin to his pre-election promise to set up a national pharmacare program. He and his health and finance ministers have rejected the proposal as too costly, but is it? The provinces already pay the costs, and a unified program may be less costly. Provincial leaders wouldn't like this, but Martin could set up a plan to reduce the amount of health-care dollars transferred to the provinces, which would pay a large part of the extra costs. At this time it looks like working families will continue to pay most of the bills and collect few of the benefits. Martin, who promised a say in appointing Supreme Court justices, weakly allowed a seven-person panel to question the Justice Minister on his appointment of two left-wing female judges, with no grilling of the judges on their views, which are known to support gay rights. Conservatives for years have pushed for a chance to question high court appointees (as they do in the U.S.) on their personal views, and approve or disapprove of the appointments. The two Conservatives on the panel voted against the selection, calling the hearing a joke and another broken Liberal promise. This fall, the Supreme Court will rule on whether the Liberal's proposed legislation on same-sex marriages is constitutional. Any bets as to how these two will vote? Liberal back-bench MPs are making demands and causing problems for the Prime Minister. Incumbents are demanding that Martin protect them from democratic nomination fights in their ridings. They don't want to have to leave Ottawa to fight a contested nomination. Martin sort of promised to protect them. Remember, he was roundly criticized during the election campaign for parachuting in "star candidates" and not allowing the locals to contest or vote. Meanwhile, Toronto MP Carolyn Parrish hit the news again with another anti-American remark. She called the missile defence supporters "a coalition of the idiots." Martin did little but urge her to withdraw her remarks, but no apology and no punishment for Parrish. Parrish and Martin just don't get it. To the Americans, it shows the wrong attitude by a government that promised to repair Canada-U.S. relations damaged by Chretien's gang. Shortly after her remarks, novice Agriculture Minister Andy Mitchell met with Anne Veneman, U.S. Agriculture Secretary, about reopening the U.S. border to live Canadian cattle. The meeting was cool and he came home empty-handed. Are we really surprised? What does Manitoba Health Minister David Chomiak have to do with any of this? Nothing, but like the Martin Gang, he has been battered by negative news on the health front. We may have to keep in mind that in running this department, it is impossible to please the public. The latest bit of negative news was a report that revealed waiting times for CT scans has doubled since 1999, in spite of the fact that the NDP last year purchased four CT scanners. Instead of shortening the waiting time, the number of requests doubled. The waiting time in June was nine weeks. The Health Minister expressed frustration at the news saying "we've done everything we can do." In 1999, the NDP ran on a platform of "fixing health care" (sound familiar?). As opposition Leader Stuart Murray points out, Gary Doer promised to cut the scan wait by a week for each year he was in office, plus cut the waits for ultrasounds and MRIs. The wait is now 12 weeks for an ultrasound and 15 weeks for an MRI. Murray says there are private clinics such as The Maples that could relieve the pressure, but the NDP are hung up on ideology, opposing private facilities. Chomiak, who has a constant pained look (like any other health minister), was NDP Health critic during the last Filmon term. He had all of the criticism and all of the answers to the crises in health care. He has found out how difficult the job is and that his penchant for throwing more and more money at the problems is not solving them. Could it be that the system needs reform? Keep healthy!
