Conservatives want fully privatized healthcare

by The Canadian Editorial Staff

The Canadian National Newspaper has received documentation which substantiates that the elites of Stephen Harper's Conservative Party of Canada, seek a healthcare system in Canada, that is 100% privatized. This apparent hidden Conservative agenda on the Canadian healthcare is contained within the Manifesto ironically entitled "A Canada Strong and Free". This Manifesto goes well beyond even Alberta Premier Ralph Klein's publicized calls for a flawed "two-tier" system of co-existing private and public system. "A Canada Strong and Free" was written by former Ontario Premier Mike Harris and Reform Party of Canada founder Preston Manning.

This apparent Manifesto has been virtually ignored by mass-media coverage in the 2006 Federal Election, which has been largely uncritical of the political agenda of the Conservative Party. Instead, much of the Canadian mass-media -- owned and run by large corporate and financially wealthy interests -- has seen fit to give Conservative leader Stephen Harper free reign to present election political rhetoric. This slickly presented rhetoric, have been creatively designed by strategists and hired public relations firms, to cover-up actual Conservative Party intentions.

Having officially released the apparent "Canada Strong and Free" Manifesto, The Canadian has been informed by reliable sources that the Conservative plan to follow through on this document in the event of any Conservative Party of Canada electoral victory. Conservatives allegedly plan to claim, in the event of any Conservative win, that the electoral popular support gave them the "mandate" to create a fully privatized healthcare system. Indeed, it was a similar trick that former Prime Minister and Conservative Party of Canada founder Brian Mulroney had misleadingly used to proclaim an "electoral mandate" to pursue so-called "Free Trade" in the mid-1980's. Meanwhile Free Trade in itself continues to threaten the integrity of the Canadian public healthcare system.

In the 1980's, Brian Mulroney went ahead to negotiate Free Trade with the U.S. after his electoral victory in 1984. His Free Trade intentions was not apart of his official campaign in 1984. Indeed Mulroney had in fact expressed opposition to "Free Trade" when he ran for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada; the very party that he would eventually seek to destroy -- in favour of the ultra-right wing Conservative Party of Canada.

The apparent 'Conservative Party' Manifesto, refers to the public healthcare system, that was championed by Tommy Douglas, as "monopolistic". On Page 31, of "A Canada Strong and Free", Harris and Manning who are Conservative Party elites, seek to "Expand health-care facilities and cut waiting times by removing all federal restrictions that prevent provincial governments from using private capital, non-governmental providers, and market-based pricing mechanisms in the development of health-care facilities and the delivery of health-care services to Canadians."

The Conservative Manifesto, further seeks also on Page 31, to "Focus federal support for health care, in the areas where it can do the most good: health-care science and research..." In other words, according to Conservatives, federal funding should not be available to support a one-tier public healthcare system, that supports the availability of the highest level of healthcare to all Canadians, irrespective of personal access to financial resources. Instead, the Conservative "vision" of healthcare in Canada, appears to seek to limit any federal funding, to subsidizing the research and development activities of largely U.S. based for-profit pharmaceutical companies, in order to further support the commercial "market" profits of their private ownership.

The apparent Conservative "vision", within Stephen Harper's effective aims, further seeks to implicitly limit access to the best health care in Canada, to the financially richest Canadians, in a milieu in which pricing for that healthcare would be set by "the market". In other words, according to "Conservatives" in Canada, doctors and American based healthcare interests, should be allowed to exploit the sick for mercenary commercial profits, (as the United States, in the name of "market doctrine").

It is apparent that any Conservative victory in 2006 Federal Election, would lead to the total destruction of the Canadian Dream for a Just Society associated with universal healthcare, and also an effective movement toward a total U.S. take-over of Canada.

The Just Society had been proclaimed as a goal of the federal Liberals under former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau. It is further unfortunate that in the 2006 Federal Election, overall Canadian political leaders appear to have turned their back on Trudeau. Pierre Elliot Trudeau has been critically acclaimed as a 'Great Canadian' that was a passionate champion for Canada, as a socially progressive society.