Senator Kirby reveals hypocrisy on Universal Public Healthcare

Compiled by News staff

If the Martin Liberals are so adamantly supported of championing universal public healthcare in Canada, then what's a Liberal Senator doing supporting the importation of American private healthcare into Canada?

The Hon. Michael J.L. Kirby, is the head of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology that has conducting research and producing Parliamentary Reports of "Reforming" Medicare in Canada. For the past fifteen years Senator Kirby has been an active member of the board of directors of the U.S.-based multinational private for-profit health care provider, Extendicare Inc. In its last annual report the company proclaimed that it is looking for expansion in long-term care with "positive impact on [commercial] profitability."

American greed-driven Private health care and insurance companies are eager to profit from the dismantling of the public health care system.

The Kirby Sham Committee Report

Headed by Liberal Senator Michael Kirby, Board member of American private nursing home giant Extendicare Inc., aided by Senator Wilbert Keon, a bigwig at Worldheart corp. and Senator Yves Morin in charge of facilitating the commercialization of health research in Canada, this Senate committee apparent re-scheduled the timing of the release of its reports conveniently preempting Romanow. In a report released more than a year ago, Kirby's committee sets out a list of ways to privatize the health care system; and calls for an end to the alleged "archaic public Medicare model"; and furthermore suggests tossing out the "public administration" principle of the Canada Health Act. Without bothering to provide any evidence or participatory democratic support, and in contradiction to the committee's previous papers, the Report suggests that the federal government consider "privatized service delivery", "user fees" and "medical savings accounts" in a bid to create an American-inspired "the 21st century health service industry".

Liberal Senator Kirby led Supreme Court Challenge against Universal Public Healthcare

On June 9th 2005, by a narrow majority, the Supreme Court of Canada found that Quebec's ban on private insurance for insured health services violated the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

Kirby, along with commercial operators such as Cambie Surgeries Corporation also intervened in the case, to opportunistically sided with the Applicant.

The ruling is certainly a victory for the advocates of privatization and two-tiered health care, but it is far less significant than these forces claim. If their challenge represented a full frontal assault on the principles of Canada's health care system, the Supreme Court's decision has dealt Medicare only a glancing blow. The following Q and A attempts to shed some light on what the Court really decided.

Did the Supreme Court challenge the validity of the Canada Health Act?

NO. While the pro-privatization lobby has pounced on the decision as spelling the death of Medicare, in fact all of the Supreme Court Justices acknowledged the importance and validity of the Canada Health Act. Moreover, the legal effect of the Court's decision is limited to Quebec. For that reason it has no legal bearing on either the Canada Health Act or any other provincial health care insurance plan, including those that also ban private insurance.

While the majority of the Supreme Court appears to believe that private insurance and public health care can co-exist without any adverse effects on the public system, there simply isn't any meaningful evidence to support that view. While the majority relies on evidence gathered by Senator Kirby, it ignores the fact that the Senator rejected the notion of two-tiered care to resolve wait list problems, stating:

A group of 10 senators, led by Liberal Senator Michael Kirby, had been given legal standing to intervene in the Supreme Coirt case. They do not go as far as Chaoulli and Zeliotis in advocating unrestricted access to private health care. Rather, they have asked the courts to allow people to use a parallel private system if the public system fails to provide them timely access. There is no question that important sections of business and the political establishment would welcome a ruling along these lines, believing it would provide an important lever to press over time for the dismantling of Medicare-especially since these same sections are pressuring governments to curtail public spending and lower taxes.

It is chaired by Senator Michael Kirby who sits on the Board of Directors of Extendicare, a large American corporation that runs for-profit nursing homes.

Senator Kirby is a Director of Extendicare, the private (and largest) home care provider in Canada. In 2001, it generated $454 million in revenue from its Canadian operations. (Extendicare's trademarked slogan is "Health Care is our Business.")

Alberta Liberal Critic Kevin Taft says that, "Both Don Mazankowski and Michael Kirby are sitting on the boards of corporations that would profit from the dismantling of public health care."

"It is unethical for public office holders to influence government actions that further their financial interests," Michael McBane, Canadian Health Coalition Cooridator says. "Canadians know it is unwise to entrust the sick and the vulnerable to profit-seeking firms."

Kirby, however, denies the conflict of interest.

"I recognized that there was a danger that if people did not like some of the options or recommendations put forward by the committee, they would try to discredit them by attacking the messenger, rather than engaging in a debate about the issues," Kirby said.

"Kirby is a health care profiteer, and he made his private, for-profit health care agenda clear in his own report," said CUPE National Secretary-Treasurer Claude Généreux . "But he is overstepping his role as senator and is only acting to weaken the public system. This is an abuse of his status to push his own commercial interests."

Moist noted that Kirby does not support the notion that the Charter establishes a constitutional right to health care. Rather he argues that the Charter only establishes a constitutional right not to be prevented from obtaining health care, at least for the select few who can afford to pay to jump the queue.

"What Kirby is trying to say is that the Charter does not establish a right to health care for all Canadians, but only for those who can afford to pay for it," concluded Moist.

The bottom line: the real Martin agenda for health care was outlined in Kirby's report. Kirby is an intervenor in a Supreme Court case to force the privatization of health care services.

Massive social spending cuts by both Ottawa and the provinces during the 1990s have caused a serious deterioration in the quality, especially the timeliness, of health care in Canada.