Consuming soduim more important than health care problems.

Canada’s envied health care system is crumbling apparently because of escalating costs that benefit the corporate section involved in supply insurance for those with the added coverage. Not so much the doctor patient cost for consultation and diagnosis. It is more the cost of drugs that the doctors must prescribe to cure all ills or at least relieve suffering. Health ministers from the provinces and territories met recently in Newfoundland to talk about the situation that some believe might become a crisis. Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq in a press conference after the meeting explained what the Harper Conservative have in mind to deal with the crisis by stating the government is considering imposing a ban on eating too much salt.

Did she propose a solution to the wait times for surgery or even for doctor appointments in parts of the country? Can we expect to pay each time a visit to the doctor become necessary? Will the government that appointed Aglukkaq to lead the country’s health ministry continue to support building hospitals and other health care institutions that match the architectural design of the most lavish government buildings? Will the government work with the provinces to deal with third world health conditions on isolated Canadian First Nation reserves? Will the plans of her government for the future include affordable health care for our children and grandchildren when needed? All of these questions and may more need answers now but all Canadians heard from Minister Aglukkaq was the government’s concern that we consume too much salt and unless it is legislated lower by laws the health care costs will rise. The over consumption of salt by Canadians is rightfully a major concern as it has been since time everlasting but to usurp the real issues of health care to concentrate of outlawing excessive use of sodium in our food is ridiculous. At least we eat better and have more food at our disposal that the greatest percentage of the rest of the world. It is time for Minister Aglukkaq and her party to get real about health care problems.

Gun Registration...Another Harper victory

The private member’s bill to kill Canada’s long gun registry was one of the best-executed Harper Conservative ploys ever devised. Catering to the large rural vote the party can now breathe a sigh of relief as the Liberal/NDP/Bloq coalition votes to keep the legislation in place. Liberals once more stumbled into the trap of supporting another Conservative initiative. It was a narrow escape but the Harperites outmaneuvered and outsmarted Ignatieff and the Liberal caucus from the outset.


The Conservatives in backing the private member’s bill (avoiding a vote of non-confidence) met a mountain of protests from every anti-gun lobby, police force and gathering of police officials in the country. The move came off exactly as planned with the Liberals showing unity on an issue that in real terms the Conservatives were ready to support. The NDP caucus played perfectly into the mix with a great many of their members representing large sprawling urban and rural constituents. NDP members one after another, caught in the crossfire, changed from supporting the rural kill the registry to siding with the more numerous urbanite keep the registry faction. After all, votes count to remain in parliament and the NDP members had to appease the majority while claiming to be voting in conscience for the best interest of the riding and the country even if it meant deserting their traditional supporters on the issue.

Liberals and Michael Ignatieff will pay dearly once the media begins to reveal how naive the party was in acting once more in the interest of Harpers minority Conservatives after avoiding having to scrap the registration law. Is this the final act of by a trembling old Liberal party that will lead to American style right wing majority government in Canada? Are we destined to have a rightwing Reform Party/ Conservative coalition with its Canadian version of Fox news and George W. Bush style politics?

Should Canadians lose the home to cancer drugs?

This issue hasn’t come up for much debate by Canada’s politicians. The problem recently written about in Reader’s Digest involves a woman in Ontario dying after the provincial government in effect disallowed funding for a needed cancer drug. The reason, although not pointed out in the article, was probably that the family owned home if sold could pay the cost of the lifesaving treatment.

There are likely two trains of thoughts on the situation. People with sufficiently large savings and employment retirement insurance policies would say the government is right denying the drug until the money realized from selling the house is exhausted. Those retirees owning a home and living on the edge or below the poverty level would believe Canada’s world-renowned healthcare system should pay for the drugs. The reason being that keeping the house would eventually mean a spouse and family members could benefit financially from the property sale.

Most elected politicians with better than average income levels and gold plated retirement benefits will probably be on the side of having the cancer victim’s family sell the asset and pay for the drug. However, that more or less selfish thinking might change once baby boomers without company pensions and facing the same dilemma consider voting against members of any party supporting using the sale of family homes to pay for medical expenses. If readers think gun registry split the country between rural and city dwellers wait until the drug payment issue divides the electorate with savings from those living at the poverty level.

The solution is obvious. Canada should simply use some of the multi-billion dollars now supporting health care to fund needed drugs for Canadians that do not have private health care coverage. To accomplish the shift in funding there would have to be spending cuts and changes in the cost of developing architecturally designed state-of-the-art facilities considered elaborately essential. Fewer well paid non-medical employees and severely reducing the payment to highly overpaid managers and administrators would be a good place to start. Renegotiating union contracts with the same vision for reducing costs that foreign owned companies buying Canada’s industries are using to decimate the terms and conditions won over the years by powerful foreign-based unions would need consideration by over expensed hospital boards.

The difference must come from the healthcare system when renegotiated benefit packages reducing the amount of drug coverage allowed retirees that worked long years for large corporations becomes a factor. Since it isn’t the fault of the family that the drugs are suddenly unaffordable, forcing the surviving spouse out of the family home should not become a Canadian tradition.

Changes are inevitable since the 2008 collapse of the North American financial system that is just now beginning to show signs of a shaky recovery. It is unrealistic to believe a country as small, and rich in resources, going at bargain prices to large foreign interests, will continue to weather the storm. Let’s hope our leaders are more far-sighted than the political games currently taking place in parliament and supported by a sensational seeking media.