Eager to be part of the fight for the future of health care in Canada, Ujjal Dosanjh last month asked Michael Ignatieff to move him from defence to health in the Liberal Leader’s shadow cabinet.
What the B.C. MP and former health minister never anticipated was that one of his first fights would be with one of his own colleagues – Keith Martin.
On Monday, Dr. Martin’s office circulated an op-ed article in which the B.C. Liberal and medical doctor called for a private-public health care system as a solution to the crisis.
“I believe Mr. Martin has a right to speak his mind but it’s irrelevant what he says on health because he doesn’t speak for the Liberal Party of Canada on health care,” Mr. Dosanjh told The Globe on Tuesday.
Although Mr. Dosanjh dodged the question of how much trouble Mr. Martin is causing the party, it’s clear he is not impressed with Mr. Martin’s thesis.
“He’s been alone on health care, at least in my mind, since the 2006 election because he did the same thing with Paul Martin,” Mr. Dosanjh argued. Actually, Dr. Martin has been pushing his vision – which would allow Canadians to pay out of their own pockets for some services – since he was Reform Party health critic more than a decade ago.
So on Tuesday, Mr. Dosanjh was performing his own form of damage control.
“You know we stand four square behind the Canada Health Act and we believe if it can be improved and broadened, it should be improved and broadened,” he says, noting that should only happen within the public system. “Health care is not a commercial commodity.”
The debate over the future of the medicare system has intensified as late as politicians and others begin to focus on what happens when the federal-provincial funding formula ends in 2014.
Last week, former Brian Mulroney weighed in. Speaking to a Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the former prime minister called for a “serious, adult discussion” on the future of the system, arguing that a blue ribbon panel of medical and financial experts should be appointed to “provide a sensible framework for the debate.”
Although Mr. Dosanjh says he has the “utmost respect” for Mr. Mulroney as a former prime minister, he found his comments “insulting.”
“I don’t believe that Tommy Douglas wasn’t an adult or Lester Pearson wasn’t an adult or Pierre Trudeau wasn’t an adult, [and] wouldn’t have had the adult conversation bringing in the Canada Health Act. ... I just believe we need to kind of stop using those kinds of phrases. We’ve had an adult conversation in Canada about health care. We believe it’s a public good.”
And Mr. Dosanjh dismisses arguments from critics who say the system isn’t sustainable because 50 per cent of the provincial budgets are going into health. Noting that figure used to be 20 per cent, he added: “You know why that is? We have had the same percentage of GDP being spent on health care in Canada for the last 20 years – that is about 9 to 10 per cent.”
Mr. Dosanjh said that choices – whether right or wrong – have been made to give tax cuts to people at the provincial level. As a result, provincial revenue hasn’t grown as much as GDP and “therefore the percentage of the budget that is to go into health care provincially continues to go up because we continue to provide tax cuts.”
“I don’t want to pay more taxes but I think we have to have an honest conversation about this issue,” Mr. Dosanjh said. “And the honest conversation would tell you that we are not spending any more percentage of the GDP on public health care than we did 20 years ago.”
