icman

I did no such thing. If you keep trying to put your words in people's mouths, you'll get them bit off. I care about efficiency. But I'm not a moron and I understand that you can only make a human edifice reach a certain level of efficiency. So, bust the unions, make all staff work at 100% productivity with no delivery errors, make all management work at 100% productivity with no management errors, reduce all management salaries to no more than 15% more than their subordinates' all the way up the ladder, and no bonuses for anyone. Also, stockholder returns = 0, because to be efficient, all revenue must be invested back into the organization. Oh yeah, and no more than 4 layers of management between the managing director and the janitor. And one more cherry blossom, delete all budget for workplace safety and health. After all, keeping the staff alive and preventing workplace injury is too expensive, and each individual's responsibility anyway. Hell, while we're at it, lets repeal all labour legislation so that we can force people to pay the organization for the privilege of working rather than paying them at all. Ah, the perfect health care organization. Clearly, it will attract all the best people to fill its ranks, and investors will be lining up to fund it. Is that the efficiency you're looking for? I have news for you, it won't ever happen. There is only so much efficiency you can squeeze out of any system, and even then, you can never arrive at the theoretical maximum - at some point the marginal returns are not worth the investment needed to further squeeze. The choice in designing a health care system either as private or public or some combination, after service delivery questions are answered, is about whose pockets get lined when money falls out of the system. The fight that privateers are fighting is ONLY about ensuring that it's their pockets and only their pockets that get lined. If your only argument is "You're a class warfare conspiracy lefty loonie crackpot", well, that says more about you than me.

No and no. But at the end of the day, if there will be waste, I want to know that the waste will benefit local economies because it will get spent through rather than pad the bank accounts of people already so rich that they couldn't count their money in their lifetime. I would also rather 100,000 workers have good benefits than 1000 executives use the same amount of cash to pad their bonuses.

I want a system that will provide... 1) Universal access - no-one is left without needed care 2) Quality Care i) Efficient and accurate diagnoses ii) High recovery rates iii) Fast resolutions 3) Efficient care - the least consumer cost per capita without sacrificing either access or quality 4) A focus on prevention (which should come out of attempts to make #3, but it never seems to in Canada or the US.) I also don't want efficiencies being sucked up by companies whose goals are not to improve the above properties of the system, but to suck as much profit from the system as possible. Efficiencies need to accrue to the taxpayer or the patient.

This thread is killing me. It is being added to faster than I can read it. Damn it all. I'm still on page 7, so I don't know if this has been resolved. Benz's problem, as I see it, is that the French culture, which once made up half of Canada, and is part of the convention of the origial Confederation, has dwindled to just Quebec. But nonetheless, it is a culture (at least a language) that has special status. It is one of the two official languages in Canada, and the reason for that was an unwritten acknowledgement of equality of status between English and French cultures at the onset of Confederation. He is saying that there is a different level of interaction with Canada that is not entirely recognized by the makeup of our Westminster system, and that is one of culture. There are population divides in Canada as represented in the House. There are regional divides as represented in the Senate. But the cultural divide between French and English, which was once effectively represented roughly half and half by regional representation in the Senate, is no longer represented half-and-half by the Senate, because the French culture has mostly contracted back into Quebec. I think Benz is saying that this issue needs to be fixed to deal with the French population, and give them back the influence they had as a culture when Confederation began. There is some beginnings of a precedent in Canada - when Native Canadians were declared a distinct society, and were granted nation status. This native status provides Native Canadians with their own national assembly. I think Benz's contention is that, not only should the French have a similar status, but our Westminster system should be adjusted somehow to include these major cultural divides (English, French, and Native Canadian) into it. Perhaps a new Legislative body with equal representation from English Canada, French Canada, and Native Canadians? Perhaps an adjustment to the makeup of the Senate to somehow represent these different cultural views? Perhaps there should be an English national assembly, and Native national assembly, and a French national assembly, with elected representatives, which has some role in our Government structure, including a say in constitutional matters? It is clear that Benz is correct that the French had more influence at the onset of Confederation than they do now, and his contention that the diminishment of that influence is at least in part the fault of deliberate attempts to fight French culture by English areas of Canada is not without merit. He further contends that this issue, an erosion of French Canada since Confederation, is what drives separatist eruptions in Quebec, and is an issue on the minds of most Quebecers (even if they are not yet separatist sympathizers.) Benz, have I got this correct? I am starting to get dizzy reading your and ToadBurner, and g_bambino's posts which are missing each other's points.

Constitutional changes require unanimous agreement of Premiers (correct?) so if the Quebec representative (the Quebec Premier) does not agree to a constitutional change, that is in effect a veto. Where is your problem with all of this? Why the veiled threats that Quebec will soon explode into blood and violence?

Yeah, only the rich ones who can afford to pay your rates. What is important (so far) to Canadians is that our long queues are servicing the poorest 1/6 of the population with reasonable health care along with the other 5/6, whereas 1/6 of Americans are denied access to health care of any kind. Other than a fringe few, Canadians will take long queues in trade to keep universal access.

Uh, the fact that people in BC deserve more time in their normal day to get to the polls. That's all. Fine, then. Keep the polls open across Canada until 9:00 Pacific. But then ROs in Newfoundland are going to be complaining that they have to work until 2:00 am. (1:30, then a half hour for counting and reporting.) This is the trouble we face in a country that spans 5 time zones. I don't see a problem with the law. The only people at election poll after they close are ROs and their volunteer staff, and scrutineers. The RO and their staff can't report on election results except through Elections Canada, and scrutineers should be able to keep their yaps shut about the results.

Yeah, especially their rock-solid financial system. They're so awsome.

"The Left" is usually campaigning against more and more corporate tax cuts and de-regulation, particularly on workplace safety issues, and that informs its arguments. It's not like "The Left" is relying on money to fall out of trees. Bloodyminded said it best in a previous post. Talking about "The Left" and "The Right" and all the horrible bullshit policies they have is a red herring. Let's please discuss the actual issue rather than argue about how we discuss the issue!

If you don't have anything better to say than "when you guys are assholes, you're just assholes, but when we're assholes, it's perfectly justified", then please, don't say anything. I have better things to do than listen to childish shit. That's why I left the Globe blog to come here to discuss issues.

No, no, no. This behaviour is unacceptable no matter who is doing it. I don't care if it's a Liberal, a Conservative, an NDP, an independent, a Green or a Marijuana party member, if any at all. Uprooting signs is one thing. It's an annoyance. Slashing tires? Let someone try that on my car where I can see them... someone will be calling 911 and it won't be for the police to come fill out an after action report.

Thank you! The best part is that this excerpt can be used equally well to support either side of the "Harper is a tyrant" fight.

You don't want to defend YEGmann, lest ye become guilty by association. I haven't bothered to take him on only because he never sees when he is outgunned and out-argued, and completely out of his depth, so his lame retorts go on, and on, and on... Too easy to get dragged into the muck with that one. You do not want to be branded the same as him.

What's the issue here? EC is not unilaterally banning the use of Twitter by all Canadians on election night. They are reminding people that broadcasting election results prior to polls closing is illegal, and will be prosecuted, independent of how the results are broadcast (including Twitter). I don't think the fact that media change over time changes the principles behind the law.

Well said!!!

Thanks for the link. However, there were no facts in that link which pertained to how 2 Senate Greens had the clout to force Julia into a corner. Actually, there were few facts at all in the link your provided, other than the surface facts of the proposal's existence, and a diatribe castigating Julia for her duplicity. Don't blame the Greens on this. Julia is pushing this for some other reason that is not at all apparent from the crappy coverage. It seems to me, based on the GPA MP receiving a co-deputy chair spot on the committee that is looking into how best to implement a possible carbon fee structure, that the Greens are being used as her pawns to create some authenticity on the committee, so that greenies (not just green party members) won't have an excuse to flame the process as rigged. The Herald Sun's stories are almost as bad as the Toronto Sun's - all screeching and no facts.

Well, then clearly we are putting the cart before the horse. Canada needs to sit down and decide and ratify what our healthcare system should provide to Canadians. We need to agree on what we want from a healthcare system. Then we can design a system that best meets those needs. I'll start... 1) Universal access 2) Efficient (low per capita costs) 3) High quality i) high diagnostic success rate ii) high recovery rate iii) fast recovery rate (ie, lower average wait times ) 4) Minimizes suffering 5) Respectful of patients

Actually, I think I do have my head around this, and "private delivery" advocates are lying their asses off about every benefit that accrues to the users. This is not about private delivery. That we already have. This is about removing regulated pricing on procedures and allowing market pricing instead. Essentially, it is advocacy to have private insurers take over funding of medical care. Right now, every doctor (or most doctors) are their own private business. All they have to do is let their provincial Ministry determine their prices. But in this model, the profiteers are the doctors themselves, and there is no room for large corporate HMO players. The doctors can decide to perform procedures that aren't on the Ministry menu - but the client has to pay for them. The only restrictions are that they can't charge the user for a procedure that is on the Ministry menu, and they can't charge the user a differential on those procedures to make extra money - they have to fund it through provincial insurance at the prescribed rate. Anything else is fair game. All this talk about changing to private delivery is code for allowing large HMOs to take over procedure pricing and develop large for-profit organizations that drive down doctors' earnings in favour of stock-holder earnings. This necessitates market pricing for procedures, which will NOT make procedures less expensive. It will increase the health-care costs of employers who have to package health insurance into benefit packages, and self-employed people will have their health insurance premiums priced out of affordability. And all the procedures that will now be denied - to everyone except those that can pay. And the whole time, the change will be accompanied by the chant "better health care for the user.... better health care for the user..." They might as well play loud recordings of it in communities at night while people are trying to sleep. If you want an example, look to the US. Don't let anyone fool you - they pay a higher per capita cost for health care there, and millions of people can't get any coverage at all. They have forgotten that a healthy society is its own economic benefit. If you think of the movement for private health care delivery as the rich investor class putting pressure on government to manufacture for them a new, high-yield market to invest in at the expense of the working class, then it all starts to make sense. The fact is, there are only so many developable resources in the world, and high-yield investments are drying up. Places where there is still high-yield action are governed by regimes that many don't trust won't steal their invested funds. So in Canada, where there is a stable government that protects private ownership rights, pressure increases at all levels to privatize everything in sight. Imagine that.

You said that any "big-tent" party contains all views within itself and so are the only parties which are relevant, and I extrapolated that to its logical conclusion which was that all "big-tent" parties must then be equivalent, because if they all contain all views, then they all contain the same views. Actually, I think that they could if something else came up that was more important. With regard to GHGs, the GPC is filling a gap left by all the other parties. If the GPC wasn't at the table, the issue wouldn't be discussed. Over 25% of Canada thinks this is an important issue (environmental issue polling, not GPC polling). So I disagree with you that if the 3 major parties think its a low priority issue that it is therefore low priority to Canadian. We need new voices to raise issues that the mainstream parties don't want to touch. You still haven't answered my question. How did she get pushed by 2 seats into a career-ending move? I say its not credible that she got pushed. It's clear to me by some of the quotes attributed to her by the media that she believes in her move. Whether it is career-ending or not remains to be seen. A couple hundred protesters is not exactly rioting in the streets. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I see it more as the pet-peeves of the MS parties get done and undone repeatedly, and important stuff gets pushed to the side in that struggle. In the meantime, the public is fed the line that these items are horribly important, and after overexposure, they begin to believe it too.

What about private delivery and public financing? Public delivery would supposedly be more efficient, according to the "capitalist market methods should be used to do everything" crowd. But wait, that's what we do now, isn't it? My family physician does not get her day-to-day management orders from the Ministry, just the funding. And she charges me for procedures that aren't covered by the Ministry. Sounds like private delivery to me. This issue is one I haven't got my head around yet. And I imagine most of the criers on both sides of this issue likely don't either.

I read one of the decisions (about 10 years ago when I was researching this issue), and yes, the SCC relied on the "fact" that a fetus was not a person to make their decision. This was clearly an indicator to the Government that the Legislature was responsible for deciding what to do about the legal status of a fetus, but no Legislature has touched this for over 20 years. Actually, I believe it was R. v. Sullivan that I read. I shall go re-read it and get back to you. I used to think that this was a case of the SCC abdicating its responsibility to uphold the Charter. But having put more thought into it, and now given the precedent of English Common Law, it makes tragic sense that the SCC, which is NOT supposed to legislate from the bench, would find a way to kick it back to the House for resolution.

That's 5 years. We have already witnessed first-hand that Harper will not obey his own election laws.

That's where you are wrong, Molly. In my view, there is no difference between a mother deciding to abort 2 minutes before birth and 2 minutes after birth. The determining factor should be fetal development, not whether or not the kid is still attached to you. You are standing up so vehemently for a legal decision to deny a certain type of human personhood based on an arbitrary date in their life. Legally, there would be no difference between what we have now and the SCC declaring that an individual that is pre-pubescent has no legal status as a person. Or that no-one under the age of 3 has legal status as a person. Those dates are just as arbitrarily assigned. I wouldn't give a crap about this issue if it wasn't for women like that brain-dead imbecile in Saskatchewan who shot herself up the vagina with a pellet gun and lodged a pellet in the head of her 8.5 month along fetus. That kid has no legal basis to sue her for assault causing bodily harm now that he's born and brain-damaged because he wasn't a person when he was assaulted. There is no crime against him. That's morally repugnant. I get that this is a not just a touchy issue, but a very difficult one. Where should the line be drawn? I don't know the answer. So long as doctors won't perform abortions after 24 weeks except in dire circumstances where the health of the mother is at serious risk, then perhaps its self-regulating and no law is required. But that Saskatchewan woman, who had legal access to an abortion all throughout her term if she wished it, should not go unpunished for her actions. The fact that a fetus is considered legally no different than a wart until the moment of birth means any woman can make that same choice, or worse, without any consequence. That does not sit well with me. And just because I am a man doesn't mean I don't have an interest in justice, ethics and morality for children. That's like saying that I shouldn't have an opinion on Catholic priests abusing boys because I never went to Church.

The Federal Government has an interest (and a right to intervene as necessary) in ensuring that medical coverage is substantially similar across Canada, so that Canadians in NL have access to the same services as Canadians in ON or AB.