The Tories And Health Care: You Elected Them, You’re Stuck With Them

Didn’t people know when they gave the federal Conservatives a majority mandate they would use it to push their ideological agenda?

Did Canadians really buy Stephen Harper in a sweater vest? Seems so.

Now we get very expensive crime legislation in the face of declining crime, that fall related to aging demographics. Now we get the first tinkering with that neo-con nightmare, public health care.

The real problem with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s new formula for transfers to the provinces for health care (with absolutely no debate … gee, why would the Tories not want to debate funding for health care?) is not what it does to provincial coffers in the near future, but what it does when the grey wave of boomers hits their high health-care years. This new formula can’t possibly address the problem in the future. The provinces (at least those without oil, gas, oil sands or potash for revenue) are having a terrible time balancing their budgets in the face of an aging, uncompetitive manufacturing sector and the killer fiscal responsibilities of health and education.

Meanwhile, I don’t worry about Flaherty balancing his budget because the expensive responsibilities in our Constitutional makeup fall to the provinces. This is simply downloading, something Flaherty, and his Ontario cabinet buddies John Baird and Tony Clement learned at the knee of former Ontario premier and golf pro Mike Harris. And after Flaherty and Harris downloaded on municipal governments (handcuffing their transit and infrastructure renewal spending) and slashed spending, they left a $5-billion deficit. Nice work.

It’s probably not lost on Flaherty, Clement and Baird that this will handicap Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, he of the Grit ilk. They sat across from him in the Ontario Legislature, cultivating a good hate for him. And Stephen Harper has no love for the man from Ottawa South.

So the new health-funding formula is about ideology and politics while you wait for your care. Good luck.

Original Article
Source: Ottawa Citizen