Canada's Health Care 'Crisis'
How valid is the alarm behind Campbell's Euro tour?
[Editor's note: This is the fifth and last in a series on health care reform issues in European countries Premier Campbell has visited.]
Canadian public health care is in crisis!
Really? Compared to what?
One of the fundamental assumptions of Premier Gordon Campbell's recent tour of Europe is that Canadian public health care is in crisis, a theory so widespread and often repeated these days that it stands as common sense.
One classic formulation of the crisis theory is to be found in Paying More, Getting Less: Measuring the Sustainability of Provincial Public Health Expenditures in Canada, by Brett J. Skinner, published by the Fraser Institute last fall.
Skinner argues that health care costs are out of control, and will, before the middle of this century, spiral upward to consume all provincial revenues. The Canadian health care status quo is unsustainable, he argues, in terms reminiscent of the most recent throne speech delivered for the Campbell government.
The solutions, says Skinner, include requiring patients to make co-payments for publicly insured health services, "allowing people the option of paying privately (via private insurance or out-of-pocket) for all types of medical services, including hospitals and physician services," and allowing for-profit health providers to compete for delivery of publicly-insured care.
Skinner's other publications include a study for the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies in 2002 titled "The Benefits of Allowing Business Back into Canadian Health Care."
Upon the Premier's return from his fact finding tour, The Tyee repeatedly requested an interview to learn what European measures most impressed him. If Canada's system is in crisis, which countries did he think dealt with similar emergencies effectively?
And what might he say to those European experts we've found who argue that privatization, rather than solving any crisis, is adding news stresses and fractures to their health systems?
The premier has so far refused to speak with The Tyee.
What collapse?
Not everyone agrees that the Canadian system is in imminent collapse, or that market mechanisms represent the best way to stave off disaster.
The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions recently published "Can We Afford to Sustain Medicare? A Strong Role for the Federal Government," which argues that the so-called crisis in public health care in Canada is overstated in accounts like those of the Fraser Institute or BC's premier. Public spending on health care, the author points out, has fallen as a percentage of gross domestic product, from 7.4 percent in 1992 to 6.7 percent in 2002. Even projecting out to 2040, when aging baby boomers will represent a major draw on health care resources, the federal department of finance, the paper says, has estimated that public expenditure on health care will still represent less than 10 percent of GDP.
The last decade's cuts to non-health components of provincial budgets combine with provincial and federal tax cuts that have foregone nearly $250 billion in tax revenue between 1997/98 and 2004/05 to create the appearance of crisis where one doesn't really exist, argues the union document, and solutions to what real problems exist, like skyrocketing prescription drug costs, aging infrastructure and impending shortages of health care professionals, can be effectively addressed by the federal government wisely investing some of the enormous revenue surpluses it has generated back into health care for all Canadians.
'Passing the buck'
Armine Yalnizyan is the author of "Can We Afford to Sustain Medicare?" Yalnizyan is an economics consultant and research associate at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and the first recipient of the Atkinson Foundation Award for Economic Justice. She told The Tyee that over the past decade the federal government has downloaded costs onto provincial governments "passing the buck without passing the bucks."
"There have been cascading effects associated with the single-minded effort to balance the books," she said. "We've seen widespread 'passive-aggressive privatization' in so many areas, particularly in health services. We need federal investments in training, infrastructure and a true national pharmacare program. We need commitments to the social determinants of health: access to clean water and secure housing, early child development programs; not just daycare.
"We need to invest in areas that will pay off in terms of prevention and better treatment. People forget that Tommy Douglas, the father of Medicare, first tore down rural outhouses and provided electricity and clean water to residents of rural Saskatchewan before he moved on to put public health care delivery into place.
"Public health preventative measures work hand in hand with a properly funded health care delivery system to protect everyone's health. We need a national plan and national investment. If we don't plan and manage, the economic black hole nightmare can come true, but there is no need for that to happen. Look at what happened after WWII in Canada, when massive public investments in infrastructure and housing projects triggered private sector investments. The economy is a twin engined plane and it needs both the public and private sectors to fly."
'For-profit medicine is slower'
Michael Rachlis is a researcher who thinks we could fix what ails the Canadian health care system without adding on layers of for-profit enterprises.
Rachlis, a physician and health policy analyst based in Toronto, is the author most recently of Prescription for Excellence: How Innovation is Saving Canada's Health Care System. In this well-reviewed book, Rachlis argues that it would be unnecessary and counterproductive to introduce more market-based mechanisms into our health care system. He cites a number of exciting and successful experiments within the publicly funded system in Canada that have demonstrated that it is possible to create new efficiencies and improve clinical results without resorting to for-profit alternatives.
"The main reason to object to private sector expansion is that we just don't need it. For-profit medicine tends to be slower and more expensive, and its expansion won't improve the public system. If doctors work in both a private and a public system, it creates an incentive to keep the public system poor. Really, for a private system to thrive, it requires subsidies from the public system," Rachlis told The Tyee.
"Medicare is at crossroads," Rachlis wrote in the Globe and Mail in 2004. "The right shrieks privatization while the left pleads for more money. It is possible to solve Medicare's problems with innovation, without private finance or for-profit delivery. In fact, for-profit care tends to increase costs while decreasing quality."
Efficiencies pay off
The Tyee asked Dr. Rachlis about the experiments within the publicly funded health care system that inspire his confidence the system can be saved by internal innovation. Here are a few of the many he cited:
The Trillium Health Centre in Toronto, the largest freestanding day surgery centre in North America, with eight operating rooms, performs 3,000 cataract surgeries a year and 25,000 other day surgeries. The success of Trillium, Rachlis says, illustrates the immense impact that public sector day surgery clinics can have on reducing wait lists and improving clinical outcomes.
The Sault St. Marie Group Health Centre breast cancer project illustrates, Rachlis says, the enormous increases in efficiency that can be realized by creating teams of professionals who address the needs of patients in a coordinated fashion, and the great gains to be realized by applying queuing theory to case management. Women who attend at this Health Centre for a mammogram, for example, can often get needed ultrasound and biopsy procedures the same day at the same facility, rather than having to make separate appointments for each new procedure and waiting days or weeks until all the necessary diagnostic data is available. This centre has reduced the average delay from first mammogram to final diagnosis from 107 days down to 18. Rachlis says similar results are being generated in projects in Victoria, Winnipeg and Montreal.
The Hamilton Health Service Organization Mental Health and Nutrition Program is another experiment Rachlis cited in his conversation with The Tyee. The program, up and running on capitation funding since 1994 (payment per patient being helped rather than on a fee for service basis) and now employing 60 counselors, 200 family physicians and 2.2 full-time equivalent psychiatrists, serves over 80 percent of the Hamilton population. The team approach to treatment and use of queuing theory to manage flow of patients from professional to professional means that Hamilton was able to increase the number of patients receiving mental health treatment by 900 percent in the first year, while reducing referrals to outpatient psychiatric clinics by 70 percent.
Rachlis believes that the use of queuing theory to remove bottlenecks in case management can work wonders to reduce wait times and increase good clinical outcomes. Beyond that, the creation of clinical teams that use the skills of doctors, nurses, and other health professionals appropriately can, in time, eliminate almost all wait times without resorting to private, for profit alternatives.
In his book, Rachlis describes an approach called "advanced access" that is successful in most cases in eliminating long waits for access to medical treatment and, at the same time, reduces costs to the health care system. The combination of public system day clinics, advance access work on queuing in the system and the creation of teamwork systems that maximize the effectiveness of every worker, he argues, can save our Medicare system, reduce costs and wait lists and avoid the risks of profit taking, reduced service quality and fragmentation that attend for-profit intrusions into the system.
Politics without end
In the end, the decisions made about Canadian health care reform will come down to political will as much as abstruse economic analysis. Proponents of market-based reforms will continue to argue our current system is unsustainable and only the magic of the market can fix it. Fans of the social equity impacts of a public health care system who believe a publicly funded system is not only fair but less wasteful than one trying to generate profits as well as health will view these claims with skepticism and call for reforms within the public system such as those suggested by Michael Rachlis.
And the political struggle over which vision wins out is not likely to let up, no matter what reforms are ushered in … or out.
In Sweden, for example, where voters turfed a conservative government that had begun privatizing hospitals, electing the party that banned such policies, the conservatives continue to agitate for another crack at it. Johan Hjertqvist, the Swedish pro-business commentator whose work was cited in an earlier installment of this series, said in an email to The Tyee:
"In the long run, this policy is hardly sustainable. It handles present opinions within the government coalition but addresses no real world problems and solves even fewer ones. A potential centre-right government (elections in September) will lift the ban and support alternatives."
Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the privatizing reforms our premier admired while in London continue to spur vigorous political debate, including a story in the March 30 issue of The Guardian that reports the massive computer system being installed in the National Health System as part of privatizing reform is now in disarray, with the key private contractor blaming its subcontractors for not delivering necessary software on time.
The firm in trouble is Accenture: opposition MPs are expected to call for a full review of a project that has been plagued with delays, software problems and doctor dissatisfaction. This is the same Accenture that has been the focus of a major political debate here in BC over a government decision to contract out many BC Hydro functions to the firm.
'Canada has a good system'
What should Canadians take from such headlines in countries so recently visited by BC's premier? Perhaps that the term "crisis" can too easily be abused.
"Canada has a good system now. Is there a crisis? No, we've heard that forever. The system needs improvement, but that's true of every system in the world," said Steve Morgan, an assistant professor at UBC's Centre for Health Services and Policy Research.
Before weighing in on the health care reform debate, Canadian voters may well want to inform themselves thoroughly about experiences in other jurisdictions and useful experiments here at home. To do so, they are going to need more data than has been generated to date by Gordon Campbell and his weeklong fact finding tour of Europe.
Vancouver journalist Tom Sandborn is a regular contributor to The Tyee. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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haraldkann
5 years ago
Comments on "Canada's Health Care 'Crisis'"
Crisis,what crisis ? The one manufactured by the likes of Privateers like Klein,Kampbell,et al.Tell a lie enough times and people believe it after awhile.
Efficiencies are what is needed,they always have been needed,there are too many fingers in the pie and the greedy have been fleecing the system for years.Now the business community wants to get their turn being the parasites they are and Gordon Campbell wants to do what Klein couldn't.
Open the door to control the system by the business community and do it within new legal parameters that cannot be challenged.
G West
5 years ago
Harald
Ever feel you've been over this road one time too many?
Wha'd you think of that hockey game?
IAMC
5 years ago
I have an old saying I like to repeat every time I get an opportunity.
" If it moves, privatise it. "
zalm
5 years ago
I dunno about the rest of the Canada's system because I haven't worked for it, but I can tell you about Gordo's less successful reforms.
When you look at the distinguishing characteristic of Sandborn's examples above, what do you see? That's right - they are all small, focussed services that specialize in one area to provide excellence. To nominate a private clinic to the same standard, one would include the Shouldice Clinic in Ontario which does hernias better (defined as greater post-op mobility for the patient, faster recovery and with fewer complications - not at lower cost, but at the same cost) than any other place in North America.
Gordo has ignored these examples to make bigger hospitals bigger, while closing smaller more efficient ones. Why do I say more efficient? Though they cannot take advantages of economies of scale, smaller hospitals focus on routine procedures that they can do with their limited resources, and seek to improve them. 80% of our medicine is routine that can benefit from exactly the kinds of improvements done at the smaller places Sandborn notes.
Smaller acute-care facilities run at a cost of $400-700 per patient per day, while large do-everything/research/trauma centres do the same tasks at a cost of $1400-2600 per patient per day. That's fine for trauma that requires a high degree of specialisation and equipment, but 80% of our medical care does not require that. These 80% are used only to dollar-cost-average the exceptionally high cost of research facilities, trauma, and tertiary and quaternary care.
Yet nearly the first promise Gordo made was to complete that new half-empty tower at VGH, making the bloated inefficient bureacracy even bigger. Say goodbye to almost $200 million on that project alone.
Then he closed St. Mary's - the one place in the Lower Mainland where if you had a surgery booked, you were >97% guaranteed you would have it on the day it was scheduled. No delays, no cancellations. Try telling that to the vast majority of BC residents who have had even their simplest procedures rescheduled an average of twice, and some up to six times!
Under the Harcourt government, the Ministry of Health started us down the road to leaner, meaner organizations that focussed on 80% of the medical needs of BC's population. Through neglect, the Clark government acheived the same result.
But Gordo has actively turned the tables, from modestly efficient, to enormously wasteful. Six huge new bureacracies in the regions replace the former Ministry of Health. Uprooting of physicians, patients and care providers to new hospitals far from their communities, ragged standards of care and support, and variances in costs of more than 200% from one facility to another, have replaced the former continuum of care.
It's not all bad, what we have now. But the improvements have come at too high a cost. People are now dying in easily preventible situations because the six health regions have spent the last few years reinventing the wheel.
I've worked in several hospitals in the Lower Mainland in the last twenty years, both large and small, so I know one thing for sure... I'll see the same cycle repeat itself in another dozen years.
haraldkann
5 years ago
G West , when the Canucks are IN the playoffs,then i will start watching again,otherwise i feel i am wasting my time.
And ,yes it is a familiar road to those of us that know what is going on and the parasites like Campbell that want in on the SCAM...read the crap his brother in law writes and you know how bad they want in and the bull$hit they will float for public consumption.
G West
5 years ago
zalm
SO, what's your proposal?
Numerous free-standing staffed clinics and a few much smaller hospitals to serve neighbourhood needs for the 80% of us who just need easy-peasy medicine? I've often thought that something along those lines could work effectively in Yaletown and the West End. You'd still have the major hospital facilities for emerg work, oncology and surgery, but the day to day stuff could be done much closer to home.
Wouldn't a lot of young doctors be willing to work, at least temporarily, on that kind of a basis and couldn't solutions like that avoid the enormous overhead and capital costs of providing an equal number of beds in a single big structure?
If a cottage industry approach is better, why not go for it.
BC Mary
5 years ago
Canada has a good system. Amen to that.
During a recent bout of that Very Bad Cold which was going around, I began sliding into pneumonia and, with cardiac problems, was finding it hard to breathe. My daughter called 911 and the ambulance crew, with the inhalator crew right behind them, was here so fast we forgot to pack my tooth brush. Those 4 guys were so sweetly sensitive, I'm still trying to figure out how to send my ex (and a few others) to Ambulance School.
I spent the night on a rock-hard guerney in Emergency simply because there were no empty beds in this big teaching hospital (part of the University Health Network). Next day I was ambulanced to another teaching hospital where a bed became available. I mention this only to underline the fact that the staff might have pleaded overwork -- and been less diligent -- because of their maximum workloads. But the opposite was true.
They placed me in the care of a 15-member team of bright-eyed, enthusiastic kids (Interns, student doctors) led by a Professor of Medicine from the university. They gave me a printed card with each of their names listed, and circled their own name for me when they came to my bedside.
At each step of the way, the Professor brought his team to my bedside so that I not only heard his explanations but was invited to give input. I heard them discuss what they thought was wrong, what they thought should be done; while they patiently considered my views on why certain things didn't need to be done.
Imagine me in a wheelchair, rushing (hair streaming out behind) through hospital corridors at 1:00 a.m., pushed by a nice kid who didn't want to delay my chest X-ray until next day!
Or me in a CT-Scan, letting them prove that I didn't have a Pulmonary Edema. In fact, they could find nothing wrong. It was just a rotten, rotten cold. But they were uneasy about letting me depart without a firmer diagnosis. Honest, they wanted to keep me longer! It's not what you usually hear about Canada's health care system.
After a week, when I left the hospital, the Professor pointed to that printed card again, and his phone number, saying, "That's my direct line. Call anytime."
I absolutely cannot think of any way in which my hospital care could have been better. Canada's health care system is indeed good. We should fight like wildcats to protect and support it.
The only crisis I can see, is the crisis of mindless corporate greed where patients are seen as commodities in a buy-sell deal. It's really part of the class war, don't you think?
Fiat lux
5 years ago
The only crisis is in our universities where they teach the crap of neoclassical economics, in the corporate offices desperate for more thefts from the public, and in the heads of the brainwashed faithful like our "privatizing" friends above.
Are these the same 2-3 people who keep coming back under different names, hoping for a sign of fertile ground for their faith based theories, against all the evidence?
They remind of one of these religious maniacs who keep coming around, even out here, trying to sell their scriptures. I asked one, how can the Earth be 7,000 years old, when there are rock formations and fossils, tested out to be hundreds of millions years.
He said: "The Lord put them there to test our faith!"
The same for the neocon/neoclassical nutcases.
They have nothing to show, but their faith in the impossible dream.
Ed Deak, Big Lake.
crh
5 years ago
So Gordo won't talk to the Tyee. Surely you must know that it takes donations to his party of at least $100,000 to get his attention. This guy only understands dollars and not people. Can't wait to be rid of him.
mabellbc
5 years ago
Maybe so, but that doesn't matter. Healthcare spending as a % of government budgets has increased. Thankfully, taxation revenue hasn't increased at the same rate as GDP growth. Just because GDP has gone up, doesn't mean healthcare spending should go up too. That is a ridiculous statement. Health care expenditures should increase based on population growth, demographics and inflation. It is foolish and a far stretch, by the far left to tie it to GDP.
Quite frankly - you hear the right trumpeting that we need a mix of for-profit healthcare and you have the left trumpeting the evils of for profit healthcare.
I personally don't know how to deliver healthcare effectively (from a cost and delivery standpoint). I do know that the treatment I received in the US was far superior to the treatment I have received in Canada, though I will say that I had adequate health insurance.
I don't know, and nobody here can either, because everybody is influenced by their political biases. What I do know, is that the current system is failing Canadians and the only way to fix it is to spend more, and the only way to spend more is to tax more - and this is entirely unacceptable to me.
Personally - I don't believe in government. I don't like politicians and I would prefer to see little government involvement in all facilities of life - including healthcare and education. Now, I believe in public funding but not administration. Politics cost money.....period.
I believe that people should have freedom in life to spend their money how they choose. If people wish to pay for surgery, let them.
Gary
5 years ago
Right on Ed
Fiat lux
5 years ago
When somebody doesn't believe in government it means that he, or she, doesn't believe in democracy and would sooner be collectivized and ordered around by a special interest sector.
Government makes a lot of mistakes and commits a lot of crimes, but at least in a so called "democratic society", it has a certain degree of accountability and can be kicked out.
Try to kick out Imperial Oil, or Monsanto, or Cargill, or any of these corporate mafia operating and stealing from the public under hundreds of different names, like Nestles's 800, and you'll get slapped with a SLAP suit for defamation.
We can criticize government as much as we want, but try to criticize a US "health provider" and see what you get.
The US health service is among the most inefficient in the world for monies spent on per capita service provided. Some of my US friends and relatives pay $300 to 1,000 a month and when they run out of insurance, they get kicked out of the hospital. So much for the "efficiency" of privatization.
Ed Deak.
Simon_Carlsen
5 years ago
This article courtesy of the Cuban Health Care Authority, providing universal health care since 1959!!!
Once again, I will save you the time of responding to this comment by summarizing,using keywords, a typical response to any non-A.N.S.W.E.R. approved posts: corporations, neoconazi, privitization, Gordon Campbell, france, Bush.
freebear
5 years ago
Medicine is a business. Period! Cancer is a business! All of theses costs are part of the measure of GDP!
Little profit in prevention!
Expectations are growing. How many years ago were hip and knee replacements science fiction?
In future, will we all expect hip and knee replacements? Are we an over medicated society?
Death is part of life, we can not postpone it for everyone.
I think as long as we live in a consumption driven society, that continuously tries to speed up life (more tings to do with less time), develop technology to fix everything - We will be unhealthy.
Realist
5 years ago
once again greed and corporate money grubbing result in less services for the people at reasonable rates. It's the same story over and over.Only when we kick out the meocons can we get back to being human beings who work together to help us all. It is not a matter of if this needs to take place but, when. Will there be enough of our planet left to save when the public starts to get rid of these greed mongers? I hope so. Unfortunately, in our lifetime due to an overworked society that is so focused on their god of dollars,the public has little time to understansd what is being done to them and it remains true today that only the most extreme makes an impression. (think teachers strike and the French revolt against youth labour laws). The neocons cry "public disobeiance is not acceptable as a means of change" but, today that is the only means of protecting the average citizen. This is why the neocons fear public disobedience so much that they try to put the revolts down as dangerous and illegal and resort to employing thier police to quell revolt. Well too bad! This is the only way left for the common man to make an impact on his/her world. I welcome social disobiedience as it signals change and it scares the hell out of the neocons at the same time. Viva la resistance!!!!
moodyguy
5 years ago
Thank you for the article. I agree with "Fiat Lux"
"When somebody doesn't believe in government it means that he, or she, doesn't believe in democracy" but I think that "Mabelbc" raises a valuable point, that is the point of "Belief" What we have have experienced and continue to experience is evangelization as we are brought to the faith in the "Good" of the private sector versus the "Bad" of government (as in Big Bad Government). (Note that market here seems always tro mean private for profit, not any other measure)
Study after study supports the notion that a well run public sector health system provides better outcomes than a private for profit system and make no mistake, from previous behaviours, our government is looking at private for profit (not Not for profit or any market based public idea) for they are true believers in "Profit" as the driver of efficiency and innovation. Unfortunately, research that is not funded by the right, or the left for that matter, does not support this notion.
Alas, the True Believers are in power, the publicists of the faith, including the Fraser Institute, are persistent and diligent and they are truly motivated to serve the master, "Profit". Let not reason get in their way!
mabellbc
5 years ago
Fait-Lux
Don't take me too literally. I believe in government - I am not some radical anarchist. However, I believe they should have a limited role in our lives.
They should let us make our own decisions and spend our own money. There are certain things that need to be controlled - i.e. environmental, health and education standards. Further, taxation is necessary for the development of infrastructure and delivery of essential services.
It is a philosphical difference between you and I. I believe in a society that rewards risks, entrepreneurship, hard work and job creation. A place of opportunity. We live in a global economy and unfortunately for you, the Yanks live South of us.
However, none of that resonates with you. Businesses are mobile and so are people - and America is happy to take both. There is a massive braindrain which would be even worse if we were any more socialistic. I don't need to refer you to the 90s when we lost hundreds of head offices to Alberta and the U.S.
It is the motivated people of this country creating jobs, employment and opportunities. It is the businesses and their employees paying the taxes that support your hog-wash programs.
Coyote
5 years ago
The crisis of course, arrives by strange coincidence, commensurate with the Neocon Period of Capitalist development, which is characterized, of course, by tax cuts to the wealthy. And it is this, these tax cuts and reductions in public spending which favour the ruling class which, surprise, surprise, creates the crises in child care, funding for apprentices, housing for the poor, and along with a host of other social programmes and needs, of course, Health Care.
It is not rocket science, but mere class politics which underpins all these crises.
Then basically the capitalist state, dancing to the ruling class piper who pays for the electoral tune, plays this game of button, button, who's got the button, denial, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and "always throw less cash at it than will solve the problem" and "build the crisis" to which point the demand to "do something, anything", hopefully at least, will get enough of "the masses" to stand still anyway, to allow the system to be "privatized" and made part of the "for profit system". Another big plum for the Ruling Class Masters; privatized essential public systems, underwritten by the public purse, to turn a further range of "private profits" options for (genuflect, genuflect)... You guessed it! The system's ruling class.
Thus, the crisis in the public health care system is, in the first place, deliberately manufactured as part of the intentional planning of the new/old ruling class system, and secondly a further manifestation of capitalism in its neoconservative stage of "back to the past" socio-economic development, and a part of the growing socio-economic and political crisis of our time. It is capitalism and its ruling class arrived at a new/old "anti-human" stage of redundancy.
And it will, it will in due time bear its bitter harvest for society, parallel with all the other advancing columns of crises, like that around immigration in the US and the slide into neo-fascist Never Ending War, in which we are now joined at the hip with The Empire.
Keep it up Neoconazis. You do not mean it of course, but merely to wank yourselves off to the excitement excesses of "The Capitalist Market", but you are driving the coming radicalization of left politics here and everywhere, and laying the prepatory groundwork for social revolution. Thanks for this.
birdstomach
5 years ago
http://s34.photobucket.com/albums/d133/davidlachnicht/?start=all
mabellbc
5 years ago
Coyote:
A big difference between us is that I can actually see the benefits of tax cuts to the wealthy. The wealthy re-invest their money (to make more money) and create jobs or liquidity in the capital markets.
Or, they spend it frivilously on material things - which again provides jobs.
You have to get over your resentment of these people, as they are often the most charitable of anyone you know. Jim Pattison (for example) donates 10% of his earnings to charity, and employs 30,000 Canadians.
A tax cut for him provides incentive to start more business and the cycle continues.
The wealthy may not be doing it out of the "good of their hearts", but the Campbell tax cuts saved this province from devestation.
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
I'd be happy to pay that little per month for my Health Care. Although most people here think it's free it costs me a lot more per month than that.
As usual, you have no proof of this claim. If it's all about class warfare how come the process doesn't improve under socialist governments?
ModernSerf
5 years ago
Mabellbc,
In principal I agree with your initial statements, however, then it comes down to where to draw the line. What is the responsibility of government, corporations and private citizens?
I don't think anyone here is suggesting we live in a society that does not reward risk, but just because of geographical coincidence does not mean that our policies must mirror those of the U.S., expecially given their recent slippage toward facsism.
In a world where big business seems to be calling more shots in the world than ever before, individuals need governments to ensure that they are shielded somewhat from exploitation.
Yes, you could argue that other countries will allow their people to be exploited more than we will and that will give them a competitive edge, and you would be right. But is that how we would like to compete?
Did you mean to imply that those without your 'motivation', should do without medical care, as some form of incentive program?
This type of me first mentality, and doomspeak for all those who disagree is a microscosm of all that is wrong in the world today.
haraldkann
5 years ago
And that is what the citizen expects,good governance from the people elected,not self service and speculation on futures
like the KAMPBELL KLAN
Alcibiades
5 years ago
Capitalistic culture, North American capitalistic culture, doesn’t reward risk - it rewards 'capital'. And that's the way neocons want to keep it. The reason they're so afraid is because they know the character of capital and the way they create it is building a more and more fundamentally unfair and unworkable system that discriminates as much as any slave state ever did. Eventually, even the neocons know they can only hang on to the results of their theft with a gun. That’s why you guys keep showing up here pleading for understanding – you’re afraid.
mabellbc
5 years ago
ModernSelf,
I am relatively content with our society, although I would prefer greater privatization and slightly lower taxes.
I wasn't suggesting the we follow America's each and every move. We can learn from their triumphs and mistakes.
I am responding to those who cry that big business and corporate greed is the root of all evil, and the Gordon Campbell is responsible for all of the world's problems. Read through some of the ultra-left rants on this site.
BC Dude
5 years ago
mabellbc
Why is it that the Bassi, Verk, Bornman, gordo have been totally absent from the Canwest media?
Or the many back room deals being made for “Our Public Utilities†BC Hydro is next, all 4 Corporate Greed by our elected or rather Canwest’s puppets?
Why is there a huge black out of "Freedom of Information"? Can U spell Neocon Fascists?
Is this your idea mabellbc of the so called "crème da la crème" contributing to the the good of us poor uneducated mules?
Fiat lux
5 years ago
mabellbc....
It may come as a surprise, but I've been an independent business owner in BC, a dedicated private enterpriser, former employer continuously, since 1957.
I hate large, especially multinational, corporations with a passion, because I have seen what they and their forced on treaties, like NAFTA and the WTO, designed to strip the democratic decision making powers of society, have done to real business and the human race at large.
Do you people realize that the world's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations, who are working hard to destroy all privately owned family farms etc. so they can jam people into huge cities and skin them . No matter whewre you buy your food, some of your money will end up in the same pockets.
Profits are also forms of taxation nobody dares to complain about any more, than anybody would dare to come to the defence of women in a Muslim country.
I've also lived under every known ideological system, subscribe to no ideology, or philosphy, and base my opinions on hard, well proven facts, not the words of "prophets".
The neocon capitalist system is basically an outcrop of the communist politbureu system of forced collectivization under an overlapping, self appointed ruling class, who control the money creation of the banks, the pimp politicians in virtually all levels of governments, the resources, the food supplies and the media to brainwash people into their service under fraudulent claims, like : "free to choose", or "free enterprise market economy" etc.
I wish you people would do a bit of independent and objective studying before falling for chickencrap ideologies and fraudulent economic claims.
Economic systems should work like the roads, where everybody's safety and safe conduct is protected by strict laws, enforced by an independent authority.
In a democratic society we need laws to protect our freedoms from crooks, economists and multinationals.
"Privatization" ? What privatization? The controllers of the world's economy with the perceived power of created, imaginary capital are bigger killers than Stalin, or Mao.
Cheers, Ed Deak.
Coyote
5 years ago
And that money which your wealthy spend so "frivolously" as you describe, could as well have been passed on as increased wages to his workers, or in the form of taxes to the poor, single mothers, health care etc, and more wisely and needfully spent there and by them-, for things and services that are actually needed, and created no less demand in the market place and thereby, voila, jobs.
Only spent by the working class, the poor, and for essential social services you would also be creating a more equitable and peaceful society, even for capitalism, and not the growing social inequality and its twin, social upheaval.
You are still obsessed, wanking off over money and "stuff", instead of understand the real needs of people, which is what the economy should really be all about, and not just turning over obscene corporate profits.
(It was on Business yesterday, the CBC show I believe it was, that the CEO of Capital One cleared $250,000,000 in one year, in stock options alone given to him, not including salary and other "bonuses". Now you get awful excited about, what you describe as the excessive demands of workers for wages or welfare rates going to the poor, and the threat that poses to your precious "free market system".
No wonder these dicks advocate and see no problem with a privatized health care system over a publicly funded one that meets the needs of all citizens. Shit, he's probably got investments in some aspect of a private Pharma Corp and private health services provider.
It's that about the "free capitalist market" that gets them and Mabell breathing so heavy. It's the raison d'etre of their private little wanking lives.
Money, money, money. Use the poor for cannon fodder.
C'mon mabell, you're but a self-described thirty year old drag queen. Get yo ass over there to Iraq, or even Afghanistan, and fight for what you believe in. Or at least, entertain the troops. :-)
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
Except when we do that and disagree with you we're accused of being braniwashed idealogues.....
Only of the socialist hordes gaining power and make us all equal.....
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
Don't recall seeing anyone here arguing for what you claim...only see lot's of folks arguing against an idealogical position that doesn't seem to exist.
Lastly, what do people "really" need? Good union wages?
lynn
5 years ago
mabellbc,
Labour is wealth. Remove trained and skilled labour from those so-called created jobs and what ya got?
Paper machines that don't produce paper. They just stand there. Hospitals and schools that are like ghost towns. Buses that can't move. Fishing boats tied to a dock. Ferries that can't budge. Planes that don't fly. Hotels that are abandoned. Court houses, too. Houses that never get past the drawing plans.... Wait a minute who draws the plans? It's all about labour in the end, isn't it?
So far, at least "the doing" of things involves labour. Technology and even automation itself is the result of human labour. It is people, the labour of human beings that makes things move... brings things alive.....and makes things work.
What wealth us labourers bring to the capital markets...and so underappreciated apparently...by those who blindly define wealth as money.
We could test your dislike of government though, mabellbc, if you'd like. We could see just how far neo-cons everywhere get, without the use and abuse of our system of governance for their own self-interest. How far they get...without the privilege of hidden lobby groups, without the constant abuse of FOI behind which they hide their schemes... and bury their betrayals of the public trust and on and on...
and while we're at let'ts stop these interminable public-private ventures...structures conveniently designed to facilitate a means for the private sector to reap all the profits and the public system to bear all the costs...including the burden of costs for the private sector screw-ups...
..and let's demand absolute accountability for those federal transfers that save the neo-con skin when they make tax cuts for the wealthy as their first and main priority, then cut the public social infra-structure to pay the mounting debt created by those tax cuts... and then smugly wait to be bailed out once again by federal tranfers taken from our federal public purse ( do you guys ever use your own money?)......all the while gloating at how good you are at handling the economy...while ironically even now BC still remains a has-not province...
yeah, so let's give this a try, okay, mabellbc...a kind of test of neo-con character... to see how well you make out tying your own shoelaces for a change...without the help of our public purse... and the corporate welfare system you so depend upon.
mabellbc
5 years ago
Coyote - look at the unemployment rate and wage growth - something I look at quarterly as it greatly influences my investment decisions....
Whatever Gordo and Stevo are doing is working - because unemployment has never been lower, there is solid wage growth and I am making money and paying lots of taxes - which I hope is making it's way to those single mother - who you care so much about!!
Coyote
5 years ago
"Economic systems should work like the roads, where everybody's safety and safe conduct is protected ..." Fait Lux.
Oooo. Now I wish I'd said that. I may have some different thoughts than Fait about how that could be better and more democratically done, I don't know. But a correct observation nonetheless from my friend Fait.
These folks think that the economy belongs to the rich, that it is as if they thought it up, run and work it all by themselves, without the indespensible labour and purchasing power of the rest of us, over an incredibly long social history. Horseshit!
The economy is the product of, and belongs to all of us. We tolerate these assholes thinking it's theirs, to merely "keep the social peace", we think, for it is the way it has come down to us from ancient times, and in order to get anything out of these rich assholes at all. And the day, fast approaching in my view, that we decide these dolts are doing us more harm than good, we can take it back from them, run it more democratically and of greater "social value", and end this aspect at least, of the stress of the matter. And I'm not looking back and casting around at ANY current social model, but one that we can create entirely anew for ourselves, with a little bit of this and a little bit of that, drawing on this historical experience and that, try this and try that until we find something that works, which is no less what these guys do in their own interests, with expert help, and control/circumscribe these fuquers.
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
Yada, yada, yada.......
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
But I digress. It's not going happen Coyote because too many of us are content with the balance and performance of the current governments. Is that you I hear howling in the wilderness?
Alcibiades
5 years ago
That's why you need the guns and why the right is angry all the time.
ModernSerf
5 years ago
Hey folks,
Easy on Mabellbc, we still welcome opinions from the other side of the fence, right? And speaking of which it doesn't sound like Mabellbc is supporting neo-cons, just questioning where the line should be drawn.
Mabellbc,
That being said, Ed has clearly made an effort to educate himself on this subject and if you can look past the passionate (and perhaps a bit condescending) delivery I think he has some very valid concerns that are worth further investigation by those who would prefer to dismiss it as an ultra-left rant.
I would happily entertain suggestions to replace greed as the root of all evil but if one broadens the interpretation to include dominion/power, it would be tough to support.
Corporations, just like guns, are just tools. They can be used for good or evil, but their nature attracts people with particular ambitions. Not all of these are as altruistic as the Jim Pattison example.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
Jim Pattison altruistic - not from where I stand - that's just the payoff for his conscience - you might want to check with some of his sales staff, the less sucessful ones.
haraldkann
5 years ago
Mabellbc ! I would think even you would know about CYCLICAL events that put the system into a positive spin...and right now the system is in overdriveand throwing military contracts around like confetti is about the only thing Harper can do safely.
Til there is a steady steam of body bags,but by then i doubt anybody will notice if it's not their kid...
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
I see, is that why the neo cons here are the ones with the smiles and the hard lefties are doing all the ranting and raving???
In case you missed it, we're the ones that are OK with Gordo and Stevo in spite of their shortcomings.....
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
Ah yes, support the less successful ones, that would help build his business. In his opinion, recently repeated in the Sun article from a speech in Alberta, he was helping them out by preventing them from pursuing a career path that they weren't likely to be successful in. How is that a bad thing? Rather everyone else in his organization should except less to accomodate an otherwise healthy misfit? No thanks......
bob the cat
5 years ago
yes of course it is...obviously you blue pill people are plugged into the happy machine
haraldkann
5 years ago
NLN..it's no small wonder you're smiling when you have friends like KAMPBELL killing off 716 kids,it must be funny seeing kids in distress die while you have your plates filled at neocon functions...to raise more money for the CAUSE CELEB...AND OF COURSE HARPERS SENDING ALL THOSE KIDS TO DIE FOR YOUR BANK ACCOUNT.
lynn
5 years ago
The regard for Human Rights is the real test of what defines a have or have not province. That much overlooked thing called The Quality of Life. It will immediately tell you the real priorities of a government...by what they choose to fund and by what they choose to underfund...
From the Toronto Star: [I]"BC, A Lesson In How Not To Do It."[/I] April 7, 2006.
lynn
5 years ago
Sorry, forgot the link....
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1144273816820&call_pageid=991479973472&col=991929131147
Coyote
5 years ago
You aren't deliberately ignoring Lynn above, are you mabell? ;-)
Well, first of all, we'll ignore the fact that you don't really know, " It's not going (to) happen." That's simply one of your articles of faith.
To which I would only respond with the "more lived" view of the world that is the old, so true it's a cliche, "What goes around, is coming around." One of my own, not so much an article of faith, because I have lived its actual working long enough.
Besides, if nothing else, I'm a patient fellow. Living in "the wilderness" helps with that, and focussing the mind. Both Moses and Christ knew that as well, I have read from "biblical revalation". 8-D
You see, it's because the "capitalist mind" is only preoccupied with himself/herself, and his own wellbeing and enrichment, being fundamentally a kind of sociopath, that he sees no value in the longer view of history. Which to him is but a string of shorter term events from which he profits monetarily/selfishly.
Suffice it to say, I do not share that view, and even accept that "I may not be here" to see the evolution of society beyond capitalism. You get to my age, you begin to realize that history, and the very real achievements in peoples lives that come across time with it, does not ride just on yours or my wee lifetime. Though I do endeavour to contribute to it. It is much bigger and more important than that.
It's just that with history and human development too, providing that current capitalism does not hopelessly fuq it up for future generations, "No wine shall be served up before its time." either. Before it is matured and ready.
And I accept that.
Part of the point of which is, sooner or later, you will get your turn at the wilderness as well. Might I encourage you to make good use of it too? :-)
I have actually loved it here in the wilderness, such that I even have a certain ambivalence of feeling, if the times are as I think, changing for "my kind" again. You may hopefully come to develop some affection for it as well.
BC Dude
5 years ago
Our public health care system is fine we don't have a shortage of beds we have a shortage of nurses and surgons are only allowed 1 or 2 surgeries a week VGH has many ORs, hence the wait list. Why?
mabellbc
All these so called jobs you gloat so much about are 85% service sector jobs 8-10 bucks an hour (6 bucks for Macdonals, I personaly will never set food in one again) for a 20-30 hr a week max casual part time.
The "New World Order" but lets take heart in what the people of France has done!
"Power to the People"
mabellbc
5 years ago
Coyote/Lynn,
If you wish me to respond to your rants - please keep them to a paragraph or two.
I can humour myself through 1 or 2 paragraphs of your left-wing rhetoric, but anymore is a strain on my eyes.
So Coyote - yes I am deliberately ignoring Lynn. In fact, I haven't even read when she wrote yet.
Apegirl
5 years ago
From what I understand, Pattison would fire the lowest-producing salesperson every month, then hire a replacement, who might then be fired next month if he couldn't claw his way above someone else. Pity the poor person who had the flu that month, or who had problems at home and was just un peu distrait. Someone alwayshad to be fired, which means no-one's job was safe. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in that luchroom. Just like Glenngarry Glen Ross. The purest example of survival of the fittest I've seen in a long time. Now, I wonder how anti-evolutionists would be able to reconcile that one.
mabellbc
5 years ago
BC Dude:
I remember reading an article in the Globe & Mail (I think), which talked about wage growth - particularly in BC and Alberta.
So - I am inclined to refute your comment. Although, I will accept that I am wrong. Please forward me anything that proves or supports this. I will not accept anything from any union or CCPA.
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
Harald - that's not my perspective and if you think it is you are as confused as you sound.....again, it seems the lefties are the ones doing all the ranting.
Coyote - well said, for an old guy - lol.
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
If you paid attention you would be better informed. Pattison clarified that urban myth in the weekend article in the Sun, saying that if it waas clear someone wasn't cut out for the job he felt it was better for both parties to let them move on. He didn't fire someone every month and even made a point of saying that he kept on people who he believed had the right attrbiutes for the job even if they suffered through a period of poor performance or personal issues.
I appreciate the truth isn't quite as sexy around the lefty campfire while you're waiting for another sing along to break out.....
freebear
5 years ago
How valuiable would an economy be, or a company, or business, if nobody worked in it?
Without people - nothing!
If a forest company could replant trees that have been engineered to grow without branches do you think they would do it?
Kory
5 years ago
There ARE private facilities that outperform their public counterparts. An academic approach would be to isolate the variable of public vs. private and compare them on such a level.
If I owned a public-facitity-built 1940 Volkswagon, and was filling it up with unleaded gasoline and running it on the mountainous backroads of BC that it was never built for, I would expect it to perform poorly. I would also expect that a private-facility-built 2006 Ford F150 would do a lot better in these same conditions.
Our health care system is exactly the same - the basic approach is still the same as it was 50 years ago when the system was created - provide large acute care facilities. At a time of high rates of worker injuries and pulmonary diseases (for example) this made a lot of sense. But now the issues plaguing the public health system are chronic health conditions - cancers, obesity, etc... and this trend will only increase as the population ages.
The private companies can promise to use innovative systems to deliver quality care. And they might even offer to finance it themselves. But don't kid yourselves - they won't do it for free; they'll make back all their costs and a nice profit to boot. Why hire someone else to do what we could so easily do ourselves? (I think Gordo's version of this is "Why do ourselves for free what we could pay our friends to do?").
Right now we've got, as someone mentioned above, a cyclic problem. Two steps forward and one step back. THAT is the problem that our system faces. We just need some political will to actually SOLVE the problem instead of bickering over whether or not it's our problem to solve (it is!).
haraldkann
5 years ago
Just like every story you hear it changes every time.First time i heard the story in 1979 when i moved here,Pattison fired the low man on the totem pole.
NOW 27 years later Pattison wants to be remembered as a nice guy...YEAH...SURE
Never ever heard him deny it in multiple interviews before...EVER !
Colin
5 years ago
Haraldkann
Actually it was Chreatin and sidekick Martin that sent the troops over and they all volunteered to join an army where they knew they could be sent overseas.
The present health care system uses a mix of public and private already, the question is do you want to expand that to fix the problem or try to fix the problem within the current mandate. I know few Canadians that want to go completely to the US style health care system. Even if we did privatize more, it would still look different from theirs.
People should be free to discuss the pros and cons that surface with each option without being attacked, otherwise you will not be able to weigh the benefits and costs. All I am seeing here for the most part is bitter attacks against either side, not discussing the details of how to fix it.
Personally I liked the system we had before Campbell’s meddling, judging by the chaos I see in the other government ministries it’s not surprising that there is a crisis, the game plan keeps changing all the time, so you can’t do forward planning. The silly thing is that we all knew the bulge of baby-boomers was moving through the system, planning for it should have been done 15 years ago to ensure staff and facilities were in place for it, rather than crying the sky is falling. I just saw the doctor yesterday to get booked for a small operation, I can book it anytime, no waiting. Hmmm
Coyote
5 years ago
A very good article, Kory. Your central premise and the development of your argument, I think, are entirely sound.
It is always pleasant, and educational, to read a well founded and developed analysis. Excellent balance, not just in a phony way to sound "fair to both sides", but actually "soundly balanced". ;-)
G West
5 years ago
zalm, 15 hours up from here, has a similar thoughtful post on the same subject.
neocon
5 years ago
I notice the editor said this was the last article of a five part series - thank goodness for that!
haraldkann
5 years ago
Colin ,the Liberals may have been the culprits that sent our kids/soldiers over there,but Harper is passing out the defence contracting like there is no tommorow and for some kids/soldiers,there is no tommorow.I am also aware of voluntary service.
The first post on this thread is mine,i believe people like Kampbell and his brother in law only want to EXPLOIT our health system and the growing elderly population and without any reprecussions.
Taking legal aid away from the poor,destroying the childrens ministry,charging for freedom of information,changing legislation so politicians cannot be touched,show KAMPBEL et al for what they are.
PARASITES.
G West
5 years ago
haraldkann
The people who think Jimmy P is a selfless philanthropist are the same ones who think all he got out of Expo 86 was a dollar – they probably don’t know about the tax benefits of family trusts either.
David
5 years ago
This is a great thread. Mabellbc, you are a brave soul, eloquently and patiently voicing a rational, if lonely, perspective. I can't add much of substance, but wish to call a truce on the labour/business thing. Both need each other to optimize the value, and need not be competitive. Apply labour to capital, be efficent, be creative, gain market share internationally, everyone's boats floats.
As far as health care, I too favour public funding, benchmarked properly to ensure best return on investmetn without prejudice vis a vis type of delivery. The polemics of the whole thing need to quieted, and we need to start experimenting honestly. I might want a hip in twenty years, and by then, at the present course, health care may be the only social program we have.
Lastly, here's one to flip out the conspiracy nuts- I love Harper. He has integrity. I do business with Europe and Asia, and the press we got for years has made us look like Nigeria with resources.
Keep up the rabid degate and VIVE le Differance!!!
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
NOW 27 years later Pattison wants to be remembered as a nice guy...YEAH...SURE
Never ever heard him deny it in multiple interviews before...EVER - Harald
Let's see, he a public figure with plenty of people just looking for a chance to prove that he's lying. You're an anonymous on-line poster who apparently remembers it better than the guy who lived it 27 years ago. Why am I having trouble believing you?
Frank
5 years ago
mabell,
Stevo has not passed a budget and has had no effect on the economy. Congratulate Paul Martin if you like, I won't.
Then you're an ideologue if the only think tanks you accept data from are right-wing. (There are no centrist ones)
NLN,
So you only support Gordo selectively? Yes to the things that make the bottom line look good and no to the consequences?
Glad to see we all agree that the right-wing stance against public health-care is a non-starter...
clubofrome
5 years ago
You can tell who has the wisdom around here. Just as you can tell who the wanna be psychopaths are. "I base my investments on....blah blah blah.....quarterly." What a bore at a party you must be. A Party. You know, where people gather to sociali... aw never mind.
haraldkann
5 years ago
NLN..is anonymous,Harald Kann is not,as i have proven to another poster who has problems,like you, with the truth.
And we all know how psychophants with no lives of their own can be.If you want to Hero worship your sweetheart Jimmy Pattison,go for it.you have CONSISTENTLY shown in your postings where your ideals lay and you do no sevice i can see for your fellow man...EXCEPT FOR JIMMY P THAT IS !
G West
5 years ago
In the spring of 1984 my family and I were spending the weekend at the Inn on Cowichan Bay, which was, at the time, owned by Jimmy the p. We decided to have an early dinner one night at a restaurant along the harbourfront – I can’t remember the name - and we were just starting our dinner when Jimmy and 3 of his ‘acolytes’ arrived via float plane. He was flying in, apparently, for one of his regular pep talk promotional confabs with the managers of his many companies.
For whatever reason, he and his friends walked up the quay and came into the restaurant where we were waiting to be served. It wasn’t busy and these two tables were the only ones occupied in the whole restaurant. It was impossible not to hear everything that was said at Pattison’s table.
The way that man treated the serving staff at that little restaurant was so unbelievably arrogant and appalling that my wife and I gathered up the kids and left before we had finished our meal and we went somewhere else for dessert. I don’t know what kind of businessman he is, but anyone who behaved the way he did that night is not deserving of anyone’s respect, in my opinion.
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
Not quite sure what your question is. I support the idealogical position that individual initiative, hard work and good fortune should create opportunities. I beleive in less government rather than more. i support Gordo because he shares some of those values. I don't support everything he does or stands for, is that too complicated for you?
Harald - you're forgetting that my value is in the contribution that I make to society in many ways. Frankly, I admire Jimmy P's success. Unlike you I don't believe that he should be destroyed in the name of equality.
clubofrome
5 years ago
Also attracted to shiney and sparkly things....
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
And warm and fuzzy things....
Frank
5 years ago
Perhaps, because the following statement infers that you support his policies..
So do you support a gov't that made cuts to the public system, lowered income taxes, raised other taxes to the point that it increased the overall tax burden for many people, and balanced the books on the back of unparalleled transfers from the federal gov't?
Because from the following statement
one would assume you support the ideology but not the consequences of that ideology.
That sounded snippy, I assume you were smiling?
haraldkann
5 years ago
Never in any post do i say he should be destroyed only that he try telling the truth.
as i said,he has had multiple interviews over the years and the story was low man on the totem pole was fired...so i find it strange the story changing now...then again,the victors write history
Frank
5 years ago
I'm probably not the only lefty that gets bored of playing "whack-a-neocon". I would suggest that as long as the right takes the stance illustrated here by IAMC there is little chance of ever finding a middle ground on the issue of health care.
When it comes to health-care all right-wing roads seem to lead to privatization for ideological reasons and the evidence be damned.
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
Yep. I like less government, adjusting taxes and offsetting with user fees works for me. Balancing the books with federal money, seems to make sense. Better that they just send to back to Ottawa?
The consequences of the idealogy seem to be that some people are going to have a better life than others, I'm OK with that too.
Unless you have some proof, you're the one trying to rewrite history.....
haraldkann
5 years ago
Frank,as i pointed out in another thread IAMC is the only poster that can show his colours/stripes/intellect in one short succint sentence.
He/she/it, is really an ANTI GENIUS and we are lucky to have him/her/it here for a quick example of what we should not aspire to.Then again we see what the Neocons are using in their ranks and it's not so scary a battle after all .
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
When it comes to health-care all right-wing roads seem to lead to privatization for ideological reasons and the evidence be damned.
Frank
The only positiion being epoused by IAMC is IAMC's. Each of us has a different perspective on what is needed. I'm in favour of a single payer with multiple providers under strict government guidelines. Most of us here are way beyond the public - good, private - bad, or the reverse postion, how about you?
haraldkann
5 years ago
Again with the lies,don't put words in my mouth,i know that's how you people work,but,i am not rewriting history here,I am pointing out there are many interviews out there with his blessing and that story...THAT IS NOT A REWRITE OF HISTORY.
THAT IS COMMON KNOWLEDGE.
Frank
5 years ago
mabellbc,
Not true. I think you mean its never been lower since we adopted "neocon" economic policies.
It was lower before the advent of the Chicago School.
Ah, the decade of "adjustment" to free trade. Yes, the decade of the 1990's saw Canada have an unemployment rate 3.9% higher than the US. Had never happened before. Thank you free trade.
Frank
5 years ago
.
This reply doesn't square with your reply to Harald
Clearly you're in favour of the gov't cuts that led to child deaths? Again, unless you wish to back away from your declared position.
Now I know you are not out there gassing kids NLN, I simply saw that you painted yourself into a corner and I jumped in.
Just say you have a problem with an ideology that makes cuts to the public sector without worrying about the consequences. Which is what Campbell did.
?
Not required, a simple "We balanced the books with federal cash" would have been sufficient instead of trying to claim it was their policies that did it.
I'm for whatever is supported by the best evidence. Currently, that is a public system. I oppose the use of twisted logic to support an ideologically driven agenda. Currently this describes the Michael Campbell/Preston Manning/Mike Harris/Fazil Mihlar position.
Coyote
5 years ago
No we don't "need" each other-, except within the frame of current capitalism that ties labour and makes it subservient to capital. And property and management rights law is structured to ensure that subservience. Competition between capital and labour is built into the nature of the class system.
Without that legal and historical presumption of "right" which underpins the status quo system, break it, circumscribe and wither it away, capital becomes irrelevant, but nothing, no profit tax on labour, and of no relevance or need without labour. Without labour, all the capitalists would have to learn how to do actual real, get down in the dirt, and produce something work again.
Labour on the other hand becomes "liberated" without capital. With a simple restructuring and democratizing of the social and economic framework, and the manner in which it is democratically managed, drawing on the same expert "management" advice as currently serves totalitarian capital, the position labour objectively enjoys, whenever it so chooses, is the potential and capacity to function perfectly well without the "capitalist class." That's the simple class fact of life.
The other fact of life, of course, is that Labour to here has not yet found the motivating intellectual capacity, courage or will to act and prevail. Which is the only real foundation upon which the status quo class system rests, and the resulting "seeming" dependancy of the two main social classes.
All that needs to occur is for "labour" to discover that central fact, to act so and have the will, and it can and will be done. Capital as we know it becomes history.
My view.
Capitalism is organized theft that has become simply the accepted norm. When it ceases to be seen that way, and is seen for what it really is, capitalism instantly becomes what it is; a crime wave of long standing.
And it is a crime wave as capable of being dealt with and brought to a new justice as any other crime. It's a simple matter of the form and content of one's understanding, and the will to do it.
NoLeftNutter
5 years ago
I've never said that Frank, you're being delusional. To somehow suggest like Harald, that GC is directly, entirely and exclsively responsible for the death of 716 kids is an abusrd statement. HK says it in support of an idealogical position, but it's not a logical statement. To sugggest that becasue I support smaller government I'm in favour of child deaths is just ugly rational.
There is conflicting evidence Frank, so are you the only one that knows the truth? Or, like most of us do you have an idealogical bent that allows you to believe some evidence and ingore other evidence?
G West
5 years ago
Noleftnutter
Sorry, it won't float, two weeks ago you were posting here bragging about the fact you hadn't read the Romanow Report. You're as ideological as they come.
As to Gordo's culpability, it's his watch - he's responsible. From guys who've done nothing for the past 5 years but blame everything on the NDP that kind of stuff sounds pretty stupid - he's gonna have to step up and take his lumps, and according to the Hughes report, there are a few of them coming. I reckon you haven't 'read' that either.
haraldkann
5 years ago
Just watching the news and Stan Hagen has said the Govt. is acceppting the 64 recomendations to implement in the childrens ministry.
You have to remember...the only thing important to these people is money...a few children dieing is not important,unless it is in their family.
Frank
5 years ago
An arm of gov't takes care of kids. Campbell cuts that arm. People say it will lead to problems. Campbell ignores them. Problems occur and kids die.
Its as simple and straightforward a line as someone asking if someone will will be unemployed if the company they work for closes the doors. The answer is yes.
So if you or anyone else supports those cuts then it means you are supporting child deaths. I have read many of your posts and do not believe you do. But I want to hear it from you.
I don't believe in magic or gods. I don't wrap myself in an ideology and chant the mantra and ignore the problems. Therefore I don't believe in the "magic of the marketplace" where if you have no gov't or minimal gov't we will all live in paradise because the market is magic.
Its a straight line, Make the cuts and more kids die. Campbell made the cuts.
No there isn't. There is twisted logic and actual logic. Twisted logic says you can have a health care system paid for directly by the users and that this will provide better care at a cheaper cost and that those who can't afford it will somehow be taken care of at nearly the same level because of charities. The problem is there is no data to support this position therefore it is nothing more than ideology masquerading as a reasoned discussion.
If there is actual real-world evidence out there that supports the Preston Manning/Mike Harris discussion on privatized health care then let's see it.
Frank
5 years ago
I should also add that expecting charities to pick up the pieces for the failures of a system proves it is already a failure.
Charities have enough to do handling all the other failures of our system around poverty.
BC Dude
5 years ago
Privitization, EH
UK Health Chief Quits as System Plunges into Financial Crisis
Premier Campbell: interested' 'Reformed' system faces $1.6 billion shortfall.
Gordo's taxer paid jaunt to UK back fired on him.
His whole trip ended up 1 big line of BS Lies
lynn
5 years ago
You also have to look at what employment means these days...
Does it mean enough hours to feed a family on?
Does it mean enough hours to collect benefits?
Does it come with a safe work place?
Does it provide a fair wage?
Can you be fired with no reason provided? Non ? Oui?
Is free collective bargaining for any of these rights allowed?
The quality of our lives... our human rights ... are the most valuable currency of all.... in our workplace, in our schools, in our health system, within our justice system, and in our own homes... and within our place in nature as well. It defines the true meaning of wealth. Dollars...Euros...ain't got nothing on quality of life.
haraldkann
5 years ago
Fraser institute Reports on Canadian Health System
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-10,GGLD:en&q=fraser+institute+canada+health+system+report
Here is Campbells brother in law Dr.Vertesi
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/author.asp?id=496
Read anything in these links and you will see that these people do not have anyones interest ,other than their own,in mind...
Not your interest,not mine,not our kids,grandparents,no one, but their own as BUSINESS MANAGERS.
IAMC
5 years ago
Poverty is relative to what ? Amongst your peers or compared to elslewhere, I think we are very fortunate indeed.
Rather than link, let me point out , nobody is going to be screwed by a review of this.
mikev
5 years ago
What do people think about our big new Health Authorities? I know back in the day the fairy tale from the government was that they were taking 52 health authorities and turning them all into just 6. When in actual fact there were 17 actual health authorities, and a whole pile of local hospital boards here and there. All they basically did was take all the local hospital boards and eliminate them, and add 6 new mega "Health Authorities" - the 17 actual health authorities had their borders slighlly readgusted resulting in 15 "Health Service Delivery Areas". So local volunteer boards were replaced with $mega$ $millions$ chairmen of the boards, and the public relations contractors that came with them. The grass roots were mowed down and pyramids were built to replace them, meanwhile in the middle it was all same old same old. What do people think of that? It's funny that I never saw anyone really call them on that 52 down to 6 halucination - or did I just miss it? That's all that the provincial liberals have done for healthcare as far as I can see - without actually privatising anything they made sure that only people from the corporate boardrooms would have control anyway. And they deserve hundreds of thousands a year with hundreds of thousands in severance pay right? And they need to spend hundreds of thousands on logos and branding and public relations now right? And all that does what exactly for patient care? I must be missing something. Probably not though. Sigh.
http://www2.news.gov.bc.ca/archive/2001-2005/2002HLTH0009-000402.htm
Anyway, anyone want to discuss healthcare? In response to this article on health care? Anyone?
Fiat lux
5 years ago
Statistical employment figures mean absolutely nothing, as they don't say what people are doing and, much they are earning and what they can buy with it.
Also, we have the so called "seasonally adjusted" figures plus large sections of people not counted at all. When they say unemployment is at 6%, or whatever, the real figure could easily be 15 or 18% with many of the employed lining up at the foodbanks for handouts, as they can't even feed themselves on their wages.
My first job in Vancouver paid me $1.35/hour in 1955. Then I became and apprentice with a starting wage of .75 cents. Between my wife and myself we were making less than $2./hr.
However, our monthly rent was $35. and our weekly grocery bill, when buying everything in the city , less than $20. We bought a 1949 Hillman Minx for $325 and could afford to run it.
We bought our first home for $6,500 on East 47th, with a $500 downpayment, in the mid 60s. Our mortgage was $45./month and our weekly grocery bill for 5 was around $25.
Even in the mid 70s I could take the whole family of 5 to the dentist for checkups and paid $45. for the lot.
Today we have unlimited amounts of organic meats, eggs, 3 freezers full of vegetables etc. live very simple lives, no booze, or smoke, and our monthly grocery bill can hardly make it on $350. for 2 old people. When we have to go to a dentist, we can kiss a $1000 bill goodbye.
So when the brainwashed faithful say that we never had it better they don't have the faintest idea of what they're talking about.
So let's talk about "differences in opinions", or shall we talk about cold, hard facts without any memorized ideological claptrap!
Ed Deak.
SharingIsGood
5 years ago
to continue with mikev's theme:
15 years ago, Merritt, BC had 44 hospital beds.
It had an operating room that was staffed. Women had been giving birth in the valley for thousands of years so it was only natural that there was an obstetrics ward. Townspeople were employed in the food-service and laundry facilities. This hospital provided some steady income for a community based upon the tumultuous primary and secondary resource industries related to: mining, forests, and farming-ranching.
Well, Merritt's population is growing, and with the Mountan Music Festival there is a week when there are more than 100,000 people (many of them drunk) in the valley. Twelve years ago, a retirement centre was built. Two other large buildings/projects designed to care for the aged that have been on the books for years are being completed. Our regional health authority has put the hospital down to 6 beds. There is no functioning operating theatre. The obstetrics rooms were converted to public health nurse space. The public health nurses used to be right downtown, next to the bulk of the people who use their services. Now they are up on the hill where it is difficult for the lower income people to travel - especially in the winter.
Food is shipped from Kamloops or Salmon Arm, as is the laundry. Fuel costs are up, and so the savings of centralizing food and laudry seems gone up in diesel smoke. Finally, the hospital is no longer called a hospital. What a slap in the face to a community who put on a century's worth of fundraisers to bulid a hospital, buy wheel chairs etc. to see their resources shipped off to Kamloops! Kamloops is about 45 minutes away by highway. There is no bus service to Kamloops in the morning. Poor people have a huge disadvantage getting there. It can be a dangerous and much slower drive for all travellors in the winter. If a person is seriously injured on the Coquihalla, they must be transported on these snow-covered highways to Kamloops, Hope or Kelowna.
There is no longer a hospital to take care of Merrittonians. It is just a bandaid station with a few long-term care beds some x-ray equipment and a lab for taking blood samples. It seems harder than ever to entice doctors to set up practise here, this despite the fact that one of these GP's made over $800,000 the other year with a couple of other doctors nipping his well shod heels for the rest of the booty. You see, money isn't everything, and most doctors don't want to be associated with a community that has been so foresaken by the province. And, after all of the beetle-wood is gone, and the spare dollars have been siphoned off to Whistler and Vancouver, who is going to help a bunch of tired loggers and mill-workers get ready for a new career. Who is going to pay their way? The logging company shareholders? The lumber mills? Ah, hell, they'll probably get injured on the greenline and die before the ambulance can get them to Kamloops anyway.
mikev
5 years ago
Almost the same story in Hope. Luckily there were some very committed people who managed to avoid all of the Fraser Canyon Hospitable beds being closed:
http://www.creativeresistance.ca/awareness01/2002-oct25-learning-the-ropes-befor-taking-the-reins-simone-rolph-hope-standard.htm
It's still basically a triage center for the horrific accidents that happen regularly on all the highways around the town, but at least it's something. Also luckily there is still a Health Unit right downtown, although the actual hospital isn't that far away either. Unfortunately Hope Provincial Couthouse did shut down, nice modern building sitting there empty waiting for a purpose. There was a fight for that too though, but sadly unsucessful.
search for courthouse:
proposal -
http://www.hope.ca/upload/dcd247_2002_04_22_Regular_Council_Minutes.pdf
not going well -
http://www.hope.ca/upload/dcd286_2002_12_16_Committee_of_the_Whole__Minutes.pdf
Also Greyhound used to have a building of their own open 24hrs right downtown. Now they're accross the road, running out of the back of a laundromat, open for a couple of hours a couple times a day. Transfers all happen in Chilliwack now instead. And they're cutting down on stops, so all the health care that is "only half an hour's drive away" in Chilliwack is that much more out of reach for people without their own transportation.
What can you say. It's hard to have that "everything is getting better" optimism some people seem to have.
mikev
5 years ago
Fascinating comment at the end of this one, glad I went back to it:
http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/11/02/MadAtGreyhound/
Fiat lux
5 years ago
When we bought our land in the Williams Lake area in 1975, the hospital prided itself that it could do any operation short of open heart. There were minor waiting lists, when I had to have a couple of minor surgeries, the last one in 1989.
Now, when my son's wife broke her shoulder on her way to work on her bike on a Friday morning, he had to drive her to Kamloops, a 3 1/2 hour drive. She was lying in agony there, starving, waiting for an operation for over 30 hours.
In the Williams Lake hospital floors have been closed, and patients are stacked up in the corridors. The same story with food and laundy, now imported from God knows where, spreading viruses and resistant bacteria all over BC, but in the warped minds of our government and economists, it is "cost effective".
There were good, adequate senior and acute care facilities, with excellent professional service in the middle of town. In all the years we never heard a single complaint.
The first thing GC did was to close the hospital kitchen and laundry, also the acute care down and set up a privatized facility for seniors, with a chickenfeed paid staff.
The complaints have been mounting ever since from all angles. The place allegedly stinks of urine, people are allegedly rotting in diapers, the food is lousy. One guy who dared to bring all this up in the papers was sued by the company for defamation, and as I understand, allegedly had to make an out of court settlement of $5,000. to avoid lawyers' fees. This is why I use "allegedly".
Since then there were all kinds of inquiries and promises by Interior Health, but when it came to a meeting called by the ultra right wing, conservative city mayor and council, the Authority failed even to show up.
Luckily, we now have a couple of hard working NDP MLAs, who replaced the 2 useless BCLib "yes men" seatwarmers. These 2 guys, Charlie Wyse and Bob Simpson, are in the news all the time stirring up trouble.
Of course, when we talk about services collapsing and comparing the wages people used to make that allowed them to buy homes and decent living, our friends immediately come back with charges of "nostalgia" and "we just can't afford them there things in this here globally competitive free market economy".
Before our economy was a "globally competitive free market economy" we could afford decent wages and healthcare. But now, our globally competitive multinationals are given free hand to strip our economy bare and steal our benefits out of the country by the truckloads.
So, to hell with them and their supporters. Get out of NAFTA and the WTO and kick out these crooks.
In the "competitive equilibrium of the global marketplace", human flesh has become another commodity in the service of the artificial entities of corporate shares.
Will the world ever wake up to this crime wave?
Ed Deak, Big Lake.
Jack's
5 years ago
Those in our country who haven't experienced a waiting list for surgery or a diagnostic shouldn't be writing on the subject.
Public healthcare in Canada + private clinics in Canada presently gives us the best of both worlds. One can avoid a long waiting lists to see a specialist by paying his clinic fee (if he is part of a clinic)- then go on a waiting list for "public funded" surgery.
If one can afford the clinic surgery, it shortens the waiting list for others.
The only crisis we have in Canada are nurses and hospital beds. If enough emails were sent to our government, we could change our immigration laws to allow medical specialists preferential treatment.
The way I see it, our immigration department is our biggest stumbling block.
mabellbc
5 years ago
G West & Frank:
I have not supported every move that of the Gordon Campbell administration. Frankly, I believe in every cut they have made, and would like to see them make more.
However, I think they should have phased in the cuts - as opposed to an immediate 25% cut. They should have done 10%, 10%, 5%. I don't think they anticipated a worldwide economic meltdown, 911 or SARS - coupled with massive tax cuts. This put the Gov't behind the 8-Ball and the obviously chose cuts over tax increases. You have to understand though that the business community was in the red and feeling a lot of pain, investment was low and WE NEEDED to increase business confidence.
For the most part I agree with the path Gordo has taken. I think that for myself, and for the majority of British Columbians - life is better.
As far as this "child death" thing - I agree. The Liberals fumbled that, however their cuts have not led to any child deaths. This related to investigation of child deaths. I agree this is unacceptable, but running a government is very complicated. They are going to get some things wrong.
As far as blaming the NDP - I haven't blamed them for anything but our current debt. Their deficits were never as large, but they were borrowing like never before in the 90s. They also put is deep into an economic hole.
I think things are great in BC. The Liberal policies have been implemented and any missteps going forward are their own fault.
SharingIsGood
5 years ago
maybellbc
I wish I could share your optimism. You must live in or near a big city that has reaped some of the benefits of the government's draining of funds and services from the rural workers to improve the life-styles of people in the cities. I have a close friend who just completed a 3.5 year wait to meet a specialist who could properly diagnose his painfully crippling, chronic, genetically-related health condition. Had the diagnosis been made earlier, it would have saved him years of torture and less pain for his future. Further, he requires medication that is approved for doctors to prescribe, but not covered by Pharmacare. It is very expensive. Without his meds, he is a cripple. He has no complaints against the doctors and nurses he has met. People in the health business generally get into that field because they care about people and want people to have a pleasant life.
Regarding allowing more doctors into the country from foreign lands:
Even though we currently have some shortages, I find this ethically and morally unsound. There is no legal way to discriminate between allowing a doctor to come from a high patient to doctor ratio region (like central Africa) or one coming from a nation with a lower patient to doctor ratio (like found in northern Europe). Just because some nations (like the USA) engage in brain-draining of foreign lands, it does not make it the right thing to do. With our wealth, we should be training even more doctors and sending them abroad to places on the planet where they are sorely needed. You don't win friends with guns, you win them with kindness. Canada does not need to be the rich kid who buys and bullies his way around the world. Canada can do better at sharing.
Fiat lux
5 years ago
mabel..
Why are you so pleased about the so called "cuts" when they meant wage and service losses to many thousands?
Read up on the first and second laws of thermodinamics all economic activities are run on, which prove that "Costs can not be cut, only transferred on other sectors, the environment and the future". The costs are still there, it is physically impossible to cut them, the only difference is who pays the full costs and when. The monetary manipulations provided by the neoiclasical theory and the neocon governnments make it certain that the poor will get poorer and the rich get richer.
So what if those costs really come out of the pockets of the so called "taxpayers"?
"Wealth can not be created, only taken from other sectors, the environment and the future"
Where do the tax exempt mansions, jet planes and yachts of jerks like Pattison come from, if not from our taxes? When we go shopping tomorrow, some of the prices at Save on Foods will be up to give Jimmy more and more. Also at the Safeway and the Wholesale Club. But we have the "choice" whose insatiable greed to fill first?
Not to mention the gas stations, after all Imperial Oil and Shell badly "need" our monies and deserve all they can steal? Are those obscene profits not forms of taxation ?
What benefits did the taxpayers of BC receive from the wage losses of thousands and the monies stolen out of the country by the multinational Mafia, like CN, meaning Canadian Nomore, or Tim Horton, or the forest companies? After all "foreign investors" need and deserve the benefits from our resources much more than the people of BC and Gordie will make sure they get them?
By the way, I really enjoy the desperate doubletalk of our free market proponents, trying to justify grand theft, robbery and murder in the name of "freedom". Just like their nazi and communist predecessors. I've heard them all.
Ed Deak.
Coyote
5 years ago
And sounds like many a story of medical services and care for the aged throughout the interior heartland of BC as well. My town once had just about a full service hospital, including a busy surgery, and a robust and warm, human senior care facility. Recently, I had to go to Vernon, in fact it involved three or four trips there in the run-up of tests and assessments etc., an all day business each time, for a relatively simple hernia operation-, and then find myself a hotel room for the night because the damned pain was just too excruciating to drive home on the same bloody day.
Hell, I remember like Fait, pre the tax cuts to the ruling class, when such would have included a few days stay in the hospital at least, some pampering, pillow plumping and rest for recovery time, and the surgery done in our own hospital. Now it's bim-bam, slice and dice, suck it up ma'am and out the friggin' door.
And this is the Neoconazi view of progress in the provision of medical care for our citizens-, and our seniors in their final days are now sent all over Hell's half acre, out of community and away from their friends and familes. While tax breaks, welfare and social services to the ruling class wealthy has never been a bigger and more nourishing trough of tax breaks, subsidies, forgiveable loans, land and public asset give-aways and privatizations of services. About which never a whisper of disapproval made from the criminal gang of this crime wave, many of whom play their apologists role here on Tyee.
It's why we can say with entire accuracy, that this is a criminal sociopathic crew standing astraddle and in power throughout the province and the entire country, regardless of party, for they all have and had their hand in it to one degree or another, and for which we have the manipulations of the corporate propaganda machine which passes itself off as journalism, the limitations of current capitalist democracy, and the failure to grasp the significance of what is occurring here on the part of the great body politic to thank.
And it ain't gonna change short of a close study and emulation of what has just occurred in France, around the victory of the students and working class there. Being the short answer.
We are in a fight to save the very historically evolved social values of our society, from its Americanization, and from the criminal corporate gangs working through our corporate and political state structures. It really is. It is a class war which, to here, they are winning handsomely.
And until there is a resurgence of the spirit of preparedness to engage which indeed brought us the very many social services and enviable standard of living for awhile in the postwar, we are going to continue to decline socially, however many friggin' minimum wage and tourism jobs are created, and slide south into the smothering and dehumanizing embrace of The Empire.
Frank
5 years ago
mabellbc,
Cuts hurt people. So I don't share your enthusiasm for them. They were also unnecessary.
The NDP had left two balanced budgets so there was no pressing need for cuts as Campbell demonstrated by cutting income taxes 25%. The federal dollars coming in also made the savings from those cuts redundant.
Without the 25% tax cut the Campbell gov't would have been awash in money.
Campbell then raised non-income taxes which were generally regressive in nature and which hit the lower income segments of society hardest. At the same time his cuts were hurting the services that middle, low and no income earners expect or depend on. So at the end of the day services are cut and the gov't enjoys massive surpluses.
Supposedly health care spending is up. Yet the money has certainly not gone into keeping the hospitals in Hope, Merrit, Williams Lake etc running at the same degree as they once were. Instead that money is going more and more into escalating drug costs, salaries for doctors, Campbell's new army of high paid administrators and functionaries and into the pockets of the private companies supplying services that were once done by public workers, among other things.
Don't try to pass off 911 and SARS because their effect on BC's economy was less than the Asian crisis and free trade adjustment period and more than compensated for by the very low interest rates that Campbell has enjoyed during his tenure. Thank David Dodge and Paul Martin for keeping BC afloat in spite of Campbell's gross mismanagment.
Coyote
5 years ago
Sharing Is Good,
You will doubtless find me more than a tad aggressive, which is okay, I am. My expience is that the meek do not inherit the earth, but get used as door mats. But I like you, brother. (It's why I welcome the presence of ex-Amerikans like yourself as new citizens into our country. Good people are good people, wherever they come from. :-)
A good day to you.
woody
5 years ago
Coyote says
Good people are good people, wherever they come from. :-)
Gee gully,thanks coyote, you've got me feeling prickly and warm and fuzzy all over myself. (:-)
Frank
5 years ago
You might just have the flu woody, or you've been reading Shannon's "Dust and Lust"
bob the cat
5 years ago
The announcement of a 25% tax cut was a declaration of war. A declaration of WAR!
War on the disadvantaged, the elderly..those on fixed income..the working class.
And one of the first "cuts"was funding for braille books for the blind! Funding to the blind! This too was a message..the amount of money wasn`t that great..it was a message..no one will be exempt. No sentiment..no mercy.. completely cold and merciless..
What they put the disabled through with their "means" tests is unforgivable.
These are classic bullies. They go for the weak..the helpless...but when they`re stood up to they run like hell.
They have counted on and taken full advantage of the goodwill of people..they have betrayed the Democratic ideal.
When was the last time (if ever) that a "Premier" can only speak to the chamber of commerce..who requires a heavy armed security presence wherever he goes in this Province..and probably will for as long as he resides here.
mabellbc
5 years ago
Frank:
It is your socialistic rants which annoy me the most. You fail to see any side of the coin, but your own pro-union crap!
The NDP had two balanced budgets. I am certain you don't understand the difference between a surplus/deficit and debt, however they had a couple of balanced budgets because they increased the debt from 17B to 34B. Their cash inflows were artifically high. Also, their last year they planned for a massive deficit - but reaped the benefit of the California Energy Crisis and rolling blackouts. We were selling our power to the US for 15x what we are today.
Now - you turn around and trumpted that the BC Libs have got "lucky" with high energy prices and federal transfers. In part you are right, but then you spew that kind of crap above.
Frank - again. The entire Canadian economy was booming in the 90's - BOOMING!! I was just a young and frustrated professional at that point, but do remember seeing most of my colleagues run to California, Alberta and Ontario.
BC's economy was the WORST performing of any economy in the 1990s. Give it up. The NDP overtaxed businesses (remember the BC Capital Tax) and individuals. We were the highest taxed jurisdiction in the country. Our economy was crumbling, head offices were leaving and business sentiment had never been lower. Get your head out of the sand Frank...
If you don't like the impact Campbell's cuts have had on the poor....fine. If you don't like the way they have treated labour.....I understand. If you don't like their highway expansion plans or decreased environmental regulations....again, fine.
But most rational minded people (even socialists) can see what an impact this government has had on the economy. You should take the blinders off.
clubofrome
5 years ago
The preceeding announcement by mabellbc was a paid advertisement for the BC Liberal Party. Brought to you by Three Stooges multi media marketing...
Frank
5 years ago
.
Actually I'm quite certain I do indeed understand the difference. But your remark makes me believe you don't. You state that it was because the NDP had increased the debt from 17B to 34B that created their two balanced budgets. I am happy to inform you that this was not the case. It is not as if the NDP had saved borrowed money from the past in order to create balanced budgets at the end of their reign. You are in error.
I am not right in part, I am right in full. Besides, I hadn't even mentioned energy prices.
No, the entire Cdn economy was not booming in the 1990's. In fact, here's a quote of yours from yesterday, I'm sure you remember it.
The fact is our unemployment rate was 3.9% higher than the US. This gap was unprecedented and led to the brain drain as people left to find work. The economy was in such fine shape that Paul Martin made big cuts to federal transfers in trying to wrestle a 40B deficit to the ground. Even Ralph Klein in Alberta made cuts in the 1990's. In Ontario there was concern that the manufacturing sector was being hollowed out.
Just to correct you, it was during the early 1990's the NDP under Harcourt actually had one of the best performing economies in Canada (without the benefit of low interest rates and high energy prices by the way) and there was high migration to the province. (I can happily provide the same links I've provided before on this topic) It was during the second half of the NDP reign that the economy took a bad turn, funnily enough it coincides with the Asian crisis and it is BC that is the most exposed to Asia.
A trained chimp could have made better decisions using a dart board. We've sold assets, dumped on the poor, abandoned responsible stewardship and lived off the largesse of the federal gov't, the increased world appetite for our energy and David Dodge's low interest rates.
.
Actually I make informed statements, its you that throws around phrases like "unemployment has never been lower" which are in error.
G West
5 years ago
Maybelle
I thought we'd already gotten you to admit you knew bugger all about economics three weeks ago. DO you think no one here has a memory?
Or have you been on a course?
Go have a glass of wine for lunch and check out how productive 'your workers' have been this morning.
Frank
5 years ago
I should also add that Paul Martin's cuts in transfer payments hurt all provincial budgets but in BC the NDP chose to run up the debt and struggle to maintain health care as best it could rather than pass those cuts on to the system. Under the BC NDP health care was in better shape than it was in the other provinces.
I support this increase in the debt because maintaining services when the economy is not doing well is proper Keynesian economics. Debt can always later either be paid down or will become less of a burden as the economy grows and the budget is balanced.
On the other hand, as we see now, services can't just be turned off and on like a switch. People that rely on those services need them when they need them, they can't wait. Trained people do not sit at the side of the road waiting to jump on and off the system depending on the government of the day's decisions. When you make cuts the system cannot be restored 5 years down the road simply by restoring that money. Its better to run a deficit, maintain the system and when the economy improves balance your budget.
Before the days of Friedman and his acolytes like Walker, this was considered common sense.
lynn
5 years ago
There are so many times I am thankful for the commentary on the Tyee...because often it reveals the big picture of what is happening in BC....in the rest of BC...outside of the lower mainland...the big picture constantly ignored by the MSM ...who remain conveniently blindered to the real forest in which we all now live...
Our situation on the coast equally deplorable... hospital understaffed, health workers over-extended and stressed....quality of cleaning and quality of meals seriously declining, laundry shipped off to Alberta... and on and on it goes.
Long time spouses separated...one man who gave his whole life to helping the sick and elderly...the road from our hospital even named after him to honour his years of service...in his nineties...shipped out of town when seriously ill, frail...as no beds available...two ferries away from friends and family...family devastated...just died in Vancouver...never made it home.
mabellbc, it's good you are ignoring my posts. As far as I'm concerned you are the enemy. You far too easily empathize with "the pain" of the business community but refer to the deaths of children as that "child deaths" thing.
You're just a smaller version of Bush and his latest hunger to nuke Iran...you know that "Iranian citizens deaths by nuking" thing...but then when corporate Amerika feels the pain someone's gotta burn for it. Sacrifices must be made... right?
BC Dude
5 years ago
maybellbc it's people like U who give true democracy a bad name.
gordo got in with canwest inter"fear"ance
There is lots of $ for sea/sky, 2010 BS etc
There is organized crime in all levels of Gov & the Bassi, Verk, gordo, van sam.
elections for Vancouver Mayor,
Where in the "World is James Green4000+ votes away from Jim Green.
The NPA has slashed and dashed the False Creek of low & med rent in favor of high end earners.
Fed sponsorship scandal, huge bonuses to political hacks with no paper trail now talk about organized crime, dirty dirty dirty dirty corporate greed.
When a bank can have profits $1.2 billion in its first-quarter this money has been made on the backs of the working poor and when they default on their mortgages, car payments, furniture, etc.
That many people bought into the low interest but what each percentage point more and more people will be losing these dreams.
Privatized health-care when you get sick and end up hospital and can't afford the care you need the dogs will come after your house
mabellbc
5 years ago
I would hardly say it is made off the "backs" of the poor. These big banks don't even like dealing with the poor. They want investment loans, mortgages (poor people don't mortgage), Credit Card transactions (poor people are cut-off of that), acquisitions, mergers, etc.
Lynn:
You are correct in that I am your enemy. You're type is the shame I feel about British Columbia - when the rest of the country laughs at us. They laugh at us for our lack of work ethic and reliance on the government.
The best part is there are many more like me.
When I see us electing 10 NDP MP's - it brings me shame - when the people of Alberta are working their asses of to make a better life for themselves.
I would love to see BC and Alberta side by side - sharing economic glory and opportunities. Instead, we have a bunch of "blame the government and the rich, and everybody else but myself" citizens - which in my mind are holding us back.
bob the cat
5 years ago
lynn
how are you?
How are Lucille and Cecil? It took me awhile to get the play on the names.
Have you seen this video? Its graphic..
but very powerful I think.
- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11799.htm
ubiquitous
5 years ago
You know mabel, I know that you try. You try really hard to engage in meaningful debate, but then you come up with the most rediculous statements like the one above and wonder why you get berated as often as you do. Alberta didn't elect any ndp mps, ergo, they work harder than B.C.ers?????? You are so bloody jaded by biases and prejudice, then you have the gall to turn around and accuse "us" of having blinders on. If caring about my fellow human beings, if being concerned about the struggles of those at the bottom, mean I'm a socialist (a term you use ad nauseum, although I seriously doubt you have any understanding of the term), then so be it comrade. Please mabel, the oil sands are calling. You can go to alberta, because they're just so much more hard working than any of us, and be amongst your bretheren.
bob the cat
5 years ago
to reign for 1000 years...a Triumph of the Will
G West
5 years ago
btc
probably lost on him
chrs dude
haraldkann
5 years ago
vas ist das,herr KAMPBELL ?
lynn
5 years ago
You are correct in that I am your enemy. You're type is the shame I feel about British Columbia - when the rest of the country laughs at us. They laugh at us for our lack of work ethic and reliance on the government.
The best part is there are many more like me, wrote mabellbc.
mabellbc,
Fond greetings from your enemy. It is indeed a privilege to be considerd so. I don't like pretense so I'm glad we both know where we stand...because I have no intention of pretending otherwise.
You should watch the video provided by bob the cat's link...it needs no words...a devastating portrait...about what happens when human beings are viewed as merely dispensable things and the subsequent loss of their human rights ....about what happens when things like corporations under the guise of furthering Amerikan-style democracy assume the rights of human beings...and the policies of Dr. Strangelove.
hi, bob the cat...that is a powerful video...comes with accompanying tears I'm afraid.
"Lucille and Cecil" obliviously frolicking about...as it should be :-)...I wish I could do the same right now...I'm angry and I can't seem to shake it... I just don't understand why the nuclear intentions of Bush in Iran are receiving almost footnote status...why is it so quiet...almost everywhere....apart from Hersh and a few others..it's being treated like just another day at the races...I don't get it...
bob the cat
5 years ago
lynn
so sorry `bout the tears..
a quiet dread maybe..as the monsters are being revealed for what they really are..and have been for such a long time.. in all their hideous strength ..its like "All is being revealed"....and yet there is this awful quiet..
the calm before the storm?
bob the cat
5 years ago
Harald
Ja Der Fuherer Herr Kampbellklein
Coyote
5 years ago
He could also be engaged in another, quite different activity.
Coyote
5 years ago
Lynn,
It's the way in which the sociopathology of the system reveals itself, and its incapacity to empathize with the pain of others. It is what tells us they are focussed entirely upon their own needs and everyone else is just so much fodder, and tools for manipulation in the securing of their sociopathic interests.
It really is a criminal gang we are dealing with, running and rationalizing the behaviour of current capitalism. I fear it is that calm before the storm thing of which bob the cat speaks.
We have a serious problem, Houston.
G West
5 years ago
Enemy, schmenemy, don't sweat it lynn, if only they were all as ineffectual as maybelle...I was thinking that if he had an aquatic friend he could call him facile...
btc - awesome, powerful, damning little video dude! THanks.
SharingIsGood
5 years ago
Thank you for your kind words, Coyote. As you have said that kind words are not part of your normal vocabulary, I take them as being extra special. I suspect that anyone who is willing to fight as hard as you do against this current mean-spirited government, is a person who is generally kind-hearted. Otherwise, why fight? It would be far easier to join the "neoconazis" if you were greedy.
G West
5 years ago
mabelbc:
So I guess that means you're okay with holding the Campbell government responsible for the following:
the evisceration of Child protection programs; the rape of the Agricultural Land Reserve; the wholesale and unprecedented export of raw logs while local mills can't get fibre; the abandonment of interior hospitals and the closure of scores of long-term beds; the disaster that BCFerries Corp now is for anyone who needs to get to and from the smaller islands; over-crowded classrooms; demoralized health care workers; the privatizing of some operations in our three largest universities; Gutted all special services to special needs/ESL in schools and removed class "Limits"...BCGEU workers...Home Support cuts; Welfare cuts that resulted in numerous suicides..mindboggling forms for means testing; Lets not forget the insulting, racist "Referendum" on Aboriginals which was a bloody joke..talk about embarrassing.
The demise of the last B.C. owned Forest Company...Herb Domans in Duncan.. the dividing up and selling off of his huge tree licenses, followed by the closing of many local and very efficient mills to just send the raw wood south...in Logs and woodchips; Closed many small town Courthouses.. Squamish being one of them; Proliferation of Atlantic Salmon Fish Farms; Inland pipeline plans from Alberta to B.C. Coast. Paid Parking in parks; Sold off B.C. Rail...soon after the Chekamus steelhead are wiped out by CN Derailments; Selling the Fastcats for next to nothing; outsourcing the new ferry construction contracts to heavily subsidized German Shipyards; The RAV line - a Red Carpet ride to downtown Van. to impress the European Aristocracy on their way to Whistler for their winter holiday funfest; Removed the B.U.D. passenger Rail service from North Van to Prince George.. Removed the successful Apprenticeship program when we are going to require Tradesmen bigtime; Streamlined the RCN programs to fast track RN training...but will then be used against them in future negotiations as they are no longer as "qualified"..it will lessen their bargaining power...they will be not much more than well trained "practicals"; specializing the trades...where an electrical apprentice would learn all the applications of the trade, domestic and industrial.. they will be fast tracked and specialized to suit the needs of that particular sector of business where they are needed i.e. industrial electrician or domestic electrician...ditto carpenters..other trades..they will be semi skilled workers (framers, etc.) as opposed to journeymen; The extreme polarization in B.C.. Its booming for some...not booming for a lot of others. In Squamish, for example there are more and more High End Condos being built and more people moving into the bush; The Gordon Campbell Liberals plan to sell off the Medical Services Plan and PharmaCare to either IBM or Maximus - both American multi-national corporations;this government will give an American-owned corporation access to private records on every British Columbian. This includes health treatment, pharmacy, income tax, mental health and criminal records, as well as records from the ministries of Children and Family Development and Human Resources.
There’s more of course. Still sure you want to hold Campbell and his buddies to the fire for all of this?
But hey, it's on record. Every time you come back here there's going to be someone around to remind you and add a few more items to the list...little things like Basi and Virk for example.
lynn
5 years ago
I think you're right, Coyote...especially in regards to that sociopathology you mention... that seems fueled ironically by the system's never-ending talent for running on empty ... that displays no sense of humanity or compassion for the Iranian people themselves....or what it must feel like to live under the threatened skies of Iran right now....it's gotta be the definition of terror itself...
Some might find the link below a worthwhile read..it is quite an interesting take on the possibility of Bush and Co. attacking Iran with nuclear weapons. Published yesterday...called "How Crazy are They?" ... ( bob the cat's chilling video link provides us with a pretty graphic answer in itself).
You gotta read the article right to the veerrrry end though..it's not very long.
http://peacejournalism.com/ReadArticle.asp?ArticleID=8445
IAMC
5 years ago
I think it's unfair to think that the so called 'neocon' agenda is built on a framework that is meant to screw people.
It's not, it really is meant for the workers to do well.
Gordon Campbell didn't kill 700 kid's.
If fact the most famous victim, Sherri Charlie, was sent to her Uncle's house by her First Nations advisers. They had control, Gordon Campbell was not personally involved.
Adrianne Dickhead is a scumbag living off the unfortunate deaths of people who died, will always die, and there is nothing we can practically do anything about.
Basi and Virk are a bust for the 'Progressive '
otherwise known as socialist street.
I have hope that with the momentum towards responsibility amongst us all that we will make Canada a better place.
Why are you making excuses for the left's hopeless agenda.
Long live Maximus, IBM, Microsoft, Boeing, Jazz music, Wall-Mart, Home Depot, Ikea, General Electric, Bob Dylan, Rogers and Hammerstein. Louis Armstrong. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, M.I.T.,
The Mayo Clinic, The Smithsonian Institute, The American Declaration of Independence, The American Constitution, Freedom of the press,
Civil Liberties, Rockwell, NYSI, Costco, IPOD,
Drudge Report, Jack Daniels, Budweiser, The National Library of Congress, Haliburton, War on Terrorism, NAFTA, all the things you moon-bat's would like to put down.
I ask you, what are you offering ? Hugo Chavez ?
Make your way to despair, you unrealistic whiners.
Life is good, if you pay attention.
" If it moves, privatize it "
G West
5 years ago
Like mabelbc said, you neocons are responsible, period. Now wear it!
lynn
5 years ago
Now that's funny, G West, and very clever. ;-)
I'm amazed I actually got it... Eliza Doolittle's got nothing on me. :-)
Cheers...and thanks for the smile at the end of a long day.
G West
5 years ago
The Neo con ag-end-a:
1. The 'market' rules everything - no matter what social damage might be caused. Reduce workers wages and destroy unions - eliminate workers' rights. Economic growth becomes the only measure of success - the only good coming out of this mess for individuals comes from 'the trickle down' of someone peeing down the pole;
2. Reduce the social safety net and cut public expenditures for social services - all in the name of reducing the role of government;
3. Deregulate - eliminate anything that might stand in the way of profit, including job safety;
4. Privatize (see IAMC above) Sell state owned enterprises like railways, transfer government services to the private sector - including highways, electricity, schools and universities, health services - thereby concentrating wealth in fewer hands and increasing the cost to the public for the same services that were previously owned by the public.
5. Eliminate the concept of the public good or the community and replace it with "individual responsibility"- Pressure the poorest citizens to find solutions for their own problems and if they fail, label them as 'lazy'.
The neocon agenda in foreign affairs can be seen in the structural violence inherent to the social conditions of global capitalism (the automatic creation of excluded and dispensable individuals, from the homeless to the unemployed to the economically indentured); and it is also the source, in a basic way, of the subjective violence from emerging ethnic and religious fundamentalism. Marginal people act in marginalizing ways.
In other words, a total disaster.
haraldkann
5 years ago
[QUOTI think it's unfair to think that the so called 'neocon' agenda is built on a framework that is meant to screw peopleE]
IAMC , it doesnt matter what you say,you prove yourself to be an accident of your parents stupidity...a prime example for pro abortionists arguing their case.
if it moves privatize it ! and if it kills children too bad...if it makes me IAMC money...screw you...
G West
5 years ago
lynn
I read that william rivers pitt thing this morning - ruined my whole day - BTC sent me the little video last night - ruined my whole night.
I kept thinking of some bizarro Norman Rockwell when I watched the first few scenes in the Iraqi homes... God! The colours so bright and homey - the subject so vile and obscene
glad you liked my seal.
IAMC
5 years ago
Death and TAXES , you say H & G is such an easy cop-out, coppout, copout, .
I don't know if you pay any, but taxes are't reale unless they are taken away from income.
Fair tax, just Google it, is the way to go, because it allows the consumer (citizen), to pay when he spends, not when he earns.
This allows a person to work extra time, for his family, and not be subject to the EVIL EVIL income tax.
Therefore advancing his families fortunes in our society.
Paying for his daughters College education from his other sousce of income.
Why are some oblivious to this opportunity ?
G West
5 years ago
Times Colonist (Victoria) 10 April 2006
Comment
Private health care is about making money
By Colleen Fuller
The Times Colonist published a column by Mark Milke on April 4 that
criticized a book I co-authored for the Parkland Institute about private
health insurance.
Unfortunately, the column offered no facts about health care itself, only a
diatribe against me, the Parkland Institute and the Canadian Centre for
Policy Alternatives. Milke didn't substantiate his accusations against us,
and they are not worth responding to.
What is worth doing, however, is engaging in an informed discussion about
the future of health care in Canada. The book Milke attacked is called The
Bottom Line: The Truth Behind Private Heath Insurance in Canada. It was
published by NeWest Press and the Parkland Institute three weeks ago. Its
focus is private health insurance: is it more cost-effective than the public
medicare system, and does it offer greater access and choice?
These questions are uppermost in the minds of Albertans right now because
Premier Ralph Klein has proposed what he says is a "Third Way." Under his
proposal, private health insurers will play a significantly expanded role in
the health-care system -- meaning they will no longer be restricted to
covering services such as dental care and physiotherapy that aren't provided
by medicare.
So, why is this an issue for British Columbians? After all, the B.C.
government doesn't seem to be pushing private insurance the way Klein is.
But look at the growing business of private surgical clinics – which did get
a nod in the recent B.C. throne speech, which asked "Does it really matter
to patients where or how they obtain their surgical treatment if it is paid
for with public funds?"
Our answer: It does matter. Private surgical companies have wielded
significant influence over health policy in B.C. during the past decade.
They continue to operate uninterrupted despite jeopardizing federal cash
transfers to B.C. because of Canada Health Act violations. A growing number
of British Columbians have used private companies for hip or knee
replacements or other operations, or know of others who have, often at a
steep cost.
That should be of concern. In Alberta, private surgical companies grew
during the 1990s. But they took hold even more strongly in B.C. In 1998
there were 33 such private companies operating here, while today the number
is 65, compared to 56 on the other side of the Rockies. These are not
publicly accountable non-profit clinics. They are privately financed and
unaccountable, except to their investors.
Expanded private and for-profit health care delivery is leading to increased
pressure for expanded private insurance. Private surgical companies are
demanding -- crusading, in fact -- for more, and more diverse revenue
streams because it is more financially rewarding than relying on public
reimbursements for services.
Brian Day, the founder of a well-known surgical company, promises that
private health insurance "will allow ordinary people to receive a level of
care equal to that of a prominent political figure or a professional
athlete."
Private health insurance companies don't make money by treating ordinary
folks as though they were professional athletes. And making money is why
they're in business.
G West
5 years ago
This leads private insurers to routinely deny coverage to individuals with chronic conditions such as diabetes or bronchitis, or asthma, hay fever and a host of other problems. And Canadian laws protect their right to do so. The Human Rights Act says private insurers can discriminate against people on the basis of age, sex, health status and disability. And they do.
Like Americans, many of us have extended health benefits through our employers (for dental care and other services not covered by medicare). Also like the U.S., the number of Canadians with these benefits is falling, not rising, because fewer and fewer employers can afford to pay the ever-increasing premiums.
In 1995, Statistics Canada reported that 63 per cent of the Canadian workforce was covered by extended health benefits. By 2000, this had fallen to 46 per cent. Far from offering equal benefits to all, the best private insurance policies are most likely to cover males above the age of 45 who are university-educated and highly paid.
The status quo isn't working. We need health-care reform -- as the CCPA and the Parkland Institute have long pointed out -- and we need to protect the principles of universal medicare. There is no shortage of solutions, including:
- The use of specialized public clinics to address the problem of surgical waitlists;
- A plan to take the pressure off hospitals by creating a national public home-care and long-term-care system;
- Expanded use of 24/7 community health centres that use salaried multi-disciplinary teams of health professionals paid on salary.
These are a few of the kinds of reforms that would actually make a difference to millions of Canadians struggling with health-care costs and languishing on wait lists. What we don't need are "reforms" that add the cost of delivering 10-15-per-cent profits to private investors.
We need to put the public interest in the public policy seat, not the private interests of health insurers and surgical companies.
Colleen Fuller is co-author of The Bottom Line: The Truth Behind Private Heath Insurance in Canada, published by the Parkland Institute, and a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Special to Times Colonist
G West
5 years ago
Tax all income, no matter where it comes from. Interest, dividends, inheritance, capital gains - treat it all the same - just as individuals would like to be treated, with equity. neocons want special deals for 'their' kinds of income and special subsidies for 'their' kinds of industries and special allowances and tax breaks for their kinds of developments
And they call the progressives socialists?
Go figure.
zalm
5 years ago
Well said, G West
ModernSerf
5 years ago
Mabellcb & IAMC,
Perhaps it is not fair to respond to you together as it is clear that IAMC appears unapolagetically evil.
I have always tried to believe in 'Never attribute to Malice what Stupidity will explain away' but reading what I see here it is getting more difficult to see both of you as merely misguided.
If you truly believe what you expouse here, then your callouse disregard for your fellow man is extremely sad.
Don't you realize that your push toward the extremist views on how capitalism is to be interpretted is only pulling the pendulum further from centre.
Mabellbc in particular...you sound like someone who has educated yourself on the subjects at hand, but speak mostly from fear. Is it fear of losing your position of privelidge? To whom, the imagined unwashed masses in BC, because they lack your 'motivation'?
I assure you there are millions of people in China & India that were not afforded your lifestyle but have motivation that is beyond your comprehension.
I would ask you to think of your ideal world and work backwards from that. I bet that it leads you either to question some of the things you have been supporting or to realize that views mostly stem from the fear of losing the tall stack.
Good Luck!
mabellbc
5 years ago
G West:
Let me first say that I respect your opinion and most others' - with the exception for Frank - who clearly has no clue what he is talking about....
I believe the Campbell government made some decisions to put the economy back on track. This came at the expense of social programs, and there is evidence that in some instances they may have gone too far.
I do care about people, contrary to your belief. I truly believe that people are better when there is a good economy. Taxation revenues are higher now than they have ever been, and so is spending. There are many forces at play here, and we all need to adapt.
I do hold Campbell responsible for bed shortages and demoralizing public sector unions. He could have done better. I really can't comment on the effect his government has had on rural communities - given that I am suburban and very fortunate. I do understand that there are some people who have been left behind, but people make choices in life. I have seen so many childhood friends piss away their lives. I have offered to pay for college for several, and arranged jobs for some. None accepted my offer and all screwed around at work. I have no sympathy for them, who prefer to manipulate and exploit the system.
I disagree with the rest of your rant though. Doman's kid was a joke and a killed that business. He was another spoiled rich kid, that destroyed daddy's legacy.
As for the rest of what you say, I can see the benefits. The economy and opportunity are number one for me and the BC Liberals have delivered.
I don't believe in free rides.
Realist
5 years ago
It is so interesting when you read the comments from the pro-neocons on these pages. They continuously boast about their lifestlyes as being enviable with their fine wines and multiple employees but, what is even funnier is when they suffer from a major crisis like an illness or god forbid the loss of their precious income and extravigant lifestyles. They suddenly turn into the most hard done by group ever!! Their lack of exposure to what real life actually consists creates their completely selfish and ignorant attitudes towards the rest of the world. Their limited experience smacks of a child who never leaves the nest and lives under the shelter of their parents good graces. Then one day the parents are gone and they must fend for themselves and they realize that they golden spoon was all just based on an illusion. I love it when they must face reality and they are forced to realize that for all their money and extravigence, they are just as human as the rest of the world and what is worse they now lack their precious dollars or health to buy the illusion of being a successful human in their own eyes. I realy do hope that there is a god just so that when they arrrive at the pearly gates and are confronted with their support for a government that was responsible for the lack of interest in the deaths of children or supporting those who placed the mighty dollar ahead of humanity, they crap their pants at the sudden understanding that their lives were not only wasted on the wrong things but, they compounded their mistakes by contiuously being a part of the problem instead of the solution. At least when I go to bed at night I have the satisfaction of knowing that I spent the day working towards the advancement of all humans while they can count their sheckles, secure in the knowledge that they spent the day stealing and cheating their fellow humans and that this somehow makes them superior. Won't they all be surprised when they learn the truth!
haraldkann
5 years ago
It's really funny,the Neocons all want AMERIKAN STYLE Health Care and School System and Political System...
BUT THEY DON'T WANT US TO HAVE THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS
bob the cat
5 years ago
Harald
saw this graffiti on a wall in the downtown eastside:
For Freedom: DIAL AK-47
G West
5 years ago
maybelle
Every time you and Frank have a confrontation, dude, he kicks your ASS. You know it, we know it, everyone who reads these posts knows it. You volunteered to accept the Campbell record as the due consequence of Liberal mismanagement and favoritism. You can't support your facile thinking with facts, I'm not surprised you'd say that Frank - "has no clue what he is talking about".
Like everything else you post on this site, that statement has no basis in fact. You come out of every confrontation with Frank with no more credibility than, wait for it, a 'Campbell'. Moreover, that’s not surprising for someone with such a passing familiarity with reality.
bob the cat
5 years ago
Harald
Subcomandante Marcos
EZLN
bob the cat
5 years ago
Mabel don`t like it..Franks smarter than him.
haraldkann
5 years ago
when you are shooting fish in a barrel dinner comes easy
All you have to do is a little searching into the HANSARDS and you can see what liars the KAMPBELL KLAN are .
realisticman
5 years ago
Dad has a problem. He's having trouble with his left knee. Nowdays, Dad finds it almost impossible to shuffle around helping mum. He'd be quite willing to pay for the operation but that would be illegal so he has to wait, months.
Mum and Dad's woderful doggie Racer caught one of his back legs in the fence. OK call the vet and he'll be fixed in ten days. $400.00.
Pity Dad's not classified as a dog, eh?
Dad can buy booze, heck he can go downtown and buy smack and shoot it up across from the police station, no problem. He can gamble away all the money he wants. He can buy a night of sexual intercourse, legally. The one thing he can't buy because it would break the law is pay to have his knee fixed. Canada is one of the three countries in the world where this is illegal.
Anyone who thinks that this is the way that things should be is arguing for an ideal that they espouse as a philosophy and has no compassion. Common sense doesn't come into it. Dogmatic, stubborn, foolish, idealistic, myopic, these are the words that come to mind to describe the foolish kneejerk vitriol that emanates from utterly inflexible status quoists.
I suppose it has something to do with people being afraid of losing their jobs because they fear they be uncompetitive. They doubt their ability. They like the present cartel structure. They would probably like gasoline and bread to all come from one place. Everything supplied by monopolies.
Do they care about dad?
thomas49
5 years ago
Well ,geez Sparky,of course the system cares about DAD.
You see,Dad's knee is MORE COMPLEX than your pups leg,and therefore more expensive.So,a half assed Veteranrian can operate on puppy ,while dad's kneee needs a little more attention.So health care being under control of the GOVERNMENT,who decides,who is QUALIFIED, who is is a little slow at times.
But ! if you want to speed things up ? I hear Dr.Kevorkian can take your daddy any time ,your cheque clears..
HOW ABOUT THAT,FOR PROFIT HEALTH CARE SOLD BY DR.Vertesi and the Kampbell Klan...
thomas49
5 years ago
Go to India,to Britan,to the United Mistakes...hell go to MEXICO...
SEE WHAT YOU GET !
unless you have UNLIMITED FUNDS and a REALLY GOOD LAWYER,I doubt daddy will be walking faster than your pooch and if he is,that doctor will be SWAMPED.
That service will be an anomaly in this day and age .
YOU SHOW US WHERE A PERSON CAN GET GOOD SERVICE FOR THE DOLLARS SPENT ,BESIDES A VET.
realisticman
5 years ago
B karefull Tommy, woch yor blud pwessure, you mite b needin a dokchure.
Realist
5 years ago
Yes, it is a pity thst dad is not a dog. Puppies generally like everyone and care for those around them. That would have been preferable to a morally corrupt individual who fortunately seems to spend most of his time spewing anti-humanistic propaganda instead fo actually taking part in life. thank god he has painted himself into the Tyee corner and can't find his way out! While your velcro'd to your P.C. why not look up the meaning of Easter and see what humans have based their lives upon for over two thousand years. Caring and sharing. Fortunately neo politics has only been around since Thatcher and Regan. the latest johnny come lately attempt to divert our real purpose on this earth towards greed and inhumanity. Do the world a favour and contiue to harness the void you call a brain to your P.C.
thomas49
5 years ago
your pathetic attempt to teach history shows how ill educated you are.
cain and able taught us what neocons are all about...WINNING!
so,get your facts straight,i have to fend off the ignorance of those that cannot read ,both from the left and the right.
my point of view is open to all to interpret and those that cannot understand are free to question.
but the incredibly vacant like yourselves are really nothing more than the burr under the saddle.
no reason,no rhyme,you are just there .
Realist
5 years ago
You just proved my point. you have no life as it only took you less than an hour to find this. How pathetic but, better that you should be preocupied with this site than actually going out into the world to spread your disinformation and hatefull anti-humanistic message.
thomas49
5 years ago
how pathetic your little life is to watch another live theirs.
try putting your favourite threads in your favourites/bookmark ,it should take you less than a second to access at any time.
[/B]now you have really shown your total lack of intelligence and your petty mentality,proving you are a small minded person hiding behind anonymity and really vacuous comments[B]
we had a great barbeque last night , what did you do,besides wait around for me to post ?
Realist
5 years ago
Ooo such power!!! Hey want to know how to keep an idiot in suspense?
thomas49
5 years ago
So ! 18 hours of suspense enough for yoU ?
I have to go to work,you hold down the fort ,einstien !
G West
5 years ago
Gordon Campbell has just pledged to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease. April 18/ 06
wonder how long it'll be before he forgets that promise?
Realist
5 years ago
yeah! good one! Too bad he didn't fall off the mountain while he was photo oping!
HealthJusticeRe...
5 years ago
Mr Tyee, What is happening please. I not long registered. Was accepted. Then signed in some few minutes ago. Wrote my email info to the Health issue and low and behold I am told I am not logged in etc etc. As it was a longish email, please see if you can obtain at your end and submit please.