Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

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  

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