pfezziwig

Healthcare unions are behaving just like Buzz Hargrove and the auto sector did the previous 30 years, they took all they could and got out before bankruptcy was achieved, leaving nothing for the next generation. In the healthcare public sector the same story is playing out, everyone knows healthcare spending is unsustainable but senior union members are taking as much as they can before a Greece like bankruptcy is achieved. Senior union leaders and employees will be fine though as they bail with a pile of money and juicy pension and leave nothing for the next generation, not to mention a healthcare system in shambles. Worst generation of Canadians ever.

The Left are all for free speech...when it agrees with their point of view. Ironic that the Left are less tolerant than the Right, the Right sure are apathetic these days, or afraid?

You hit the nail on the head. The Liberals and NDP do not like independent people who can take care of themselves in a sustainable manner. They prefer champagne socialists (rich public sector), selfish and near sighted incompetent dolts that need government to manage their lives, financed by stealing from the future and taxing competent individuals in rural canada.

Consider yourself lucky, if you lived in the USA where millions of people are being bailed out because they cannot afford their mortgage and responsible people are stuck with higher taxes and decreased services to pay for the bail out for the next 20 years.

Here in Halifax, Nova Scotia we just had a municipal election with just under a 40% turnout ! Our national election was about 60%, another low number. They even introduced electronic voting in Halifax to make it more accessible. What gives ? I know people are busy with other things but between voting in person or online a 40% turnout is embarrassing. Will online voting be the savior when it's fully rolled out or are we all just too apathetic nowadays? Does anyone care about their community these days or does international news from CNN concern them more?

Maybe it's the electorate that's incapable? Here in Halifax we complained for 3.5 years about our city councilors, than 6 months before an election all councilors were on their best behavior and nearly all of them were re-elected, (with less the a 40% voter turnout) ! I guess we deserve to have these knuckleheads controlling our lives with a turnout like that.

We don't need more taxes on an incompetent automotive industry, Ford and GM are already paying a price for producing cars few people want, unfortunately it is the workers on the frontlines paying the price and not executives who made the decisions to produce gas guzzlers. How about providing incentives for more efficient (cleaner) practices instead? If Ford and GM don't want to adopt the cleaner and more efficient practices let the free market punish them. Staff, GreenCarsNow.com

CAW opposition may get more votes for the Conservatives rather than less. The general public and even CAW members have little respect for the policies of their leaders. After 10 years of steady job losses due to unrealistic union demands and the destruction of the automotive sector the only people the CAW can look out for are their own executive salaries. Staff, GreenCarsNow.com

I guess the poster only supports Democracy when it only supports their point of view. When people vote Harper in he should step down? The Left are far more intolerant than the Right.

Wow , they lost 3 seats in Newfoundland, what a crushing blow. And they gained how many overall? Talk about a skewed outlook, only the fanatical left could paint the conservatives gaining seats in parliament as a positive thing for their cause. Keep up the good work Newfoundland with your ABC's, I am sure you will be rewarded appropriately for the next few years....

Wait till e-voting is adopted federally. It's the way to go, I just voted in my municipal election from my computer while laying down on the sofa one night. A week later I had to go to a voting station after a long days work. E-voting would raise the turnout another 10% and save people a lot of time and even save tax payer dollars.

The federal government is enjoying a huge tax winfall from the rising gas prices, more than they ever hoped for in their budgets for road maintenance and creation. Should the Federal government be allowed to gouge consumers like big oil companies and OPEC. We all know that all the extra revenue will not go towards road repair and creating public transportation, so why should we keep paying more gas taxes? Can anyone justify increasing gas revenue taxes? If the extra revenue was earmarked for environmentally friendly public transportation projects and development of better vehicles I could get behind the idea of increased taxes but I don't feel it will be spent that way. Staff, GreenCarsNow.com

Biofuels are still in their infancy, give them time to grow and achieve economies of scale before shooting down the idea. Should we stop every new inovation that doesn't achieve massive success right out of the gate? Transforming the auto industry is a massive undertaking, it's taken us a 100 years to get where we are now. Biofuels are still developing. Wait till they develope systems to convert plant waste material like wood chips into ethanol, no need to grow corn then and the main energy source will be waste products! Staff, GreenCarsNow.com

The title of this post no doubt scares a lot of people but it is catching on. After a successful start up in Vancouver this members based clinic is soon to set up in Calgary and Edmonton. For $2000-$4000 a year you get hours of doctor and nurse consultations and dozens of tests. Most of this is focused on preventitive healthcare. Advising and analyzing and recommending a proper diet, exercise and treating minor problems before they become big problems. Sure beats my normal 5 minutes and your rushed out the door treatments. This approach is the opposite to the public system which waits for people to fall apart then treats them. The private clinc believes this is a more cost effective way to treat people. Should the public system learn from this private healthcare system, or is the public system incapable of preventative healthcare treatment at this stage and private clinics are our only hope?

The Zenn can do more than 40kmh, but the laws restrict it's limit. To make matters worse each province sets this limit individually. I hear there's already a kit available online that allows you to alter the car's computer program which sets the 40kmh limit to something higher. They claim to have a highway capable version that may be ready next year. Hopefully provincial laws will allow them to go faster, they are 10 times safer than scooters capable of driving 100kmh. B.C. looks like it's warming up to the Zenn, now allowing sales. Why Quebec hasn't already is a mystery, I think the tie up had to do with some federal regulations just passed. If I could drive 65-75kmh that would be plenty for city driving and I'ld buy it in a heartbeat. The Feds are destroying another 'Arrow', if they don't back this company soon they will go to Mexico. Staff, GreenCarsNow.com

Imagine that, employees decide not to follow a union that is primarily responsible for Ford and GM's demise the last 10 years. Everyone knows they drove those companies into the ground with their 'tough' tactics and high demands, they're too good for their own good. The union needs to recoup some members after causing thousands to get laid off, fortuntely the Toyota employees can see through their B.S.

The NDP aren't gaining votes, the Liberals are losing them, once the Liberals get their act together watch Layton's numbers tank.

Poor Stefan Dion, he gets a couple Liberals elected and they are the one's who wil likely challenge him for his job in a year, he just can't catch a break these days.

The shortage is from lack of public funding. If governments pony up the money they can have the doctors in a heartbeat. Some hospitals are capable of doing more important surgeries like hip replacements, but their hospital budget restricts them from doing too many even though they have the staff and facilities there to do it.

Halifax Regional Municipality is a definte vote for the 'incapable' municiple governments. A small group of councillors led by David Hendsbee have hijacked the council this past year. They accomplished nothing significant towards poverty, transportation, education, business and the environment. Halifax's greatest accomplishments the last year where making the national news for barbaric violent crimes and anti-cat by-law debates. They spent more time debating an expensive anti pet by-law and debating whether to make a name change for the city than any other issue considered important by the public. The anti pet by-law is still going on as David Hendsbee's supporters, councillors Linda Mosher, Bill Karsten, Krista Snow and Mary Wile continue to push forth the unpopular legislation in light of enormous opposition in council and from the public outcry that they should be dealing with more important issues.

Faced with surgery wait lists of up to 2 years, the ruling Nova Scotian Conservative government is now trying to reduce those wait times by paying $1 million dollars to allow public sector doctors use the surgery facilities of the private healthcare company Scotia Surgery Inc. in Dartmouth. The efforts are aimed at minor surgeries so as to free up the main hospitals for major surgeries and reduce backlogs there. Finally, someone is actually doing something about the growing waiting lists rather than throughing more money at an ailing public system. Not surprisingly the nurses union and NDP leader opposed this, they put their own 'beliefs' ahead of the seriously ill needing healthcare.

A report was recently published called the 'Euro-Canada Health Consumer Index 2008'. In it they are comparing our healthcare system to a publically funded European system, a much better comparison than to the USA private sector system. When it comes to patient rights and providing the healthcare consumer with information Canada ranked poorly. Canada also finished near the bottom for pharmaceuticals funding, overall our system covers about 40% of the expense for patients while in Europe it closer to 90% ! Our system is focused on providers rather than users. Patients lack guarantees of timely and effective treatment. European healthcare systems have strong patient rights laws, something Canada does not have at all. I felt that patients concerns where being ignored as the report states. I believe this patient feedback is sorely needed and the more we listen to the users the better we can improve our healthcare services, rather than our current top down approach. I started a website up last year (HealthcareReviews.com) to provide patients/consumers with the ability to rate their doctors and hospitals services because there is no other outlet. I believe this patient feedback can help improve our healthcare system. Let's stop comparing our healthcare system to the USA and raise the bar. We can learn a lot from the european systems too, they get a better bang for their buck. Comparing our system to the USA will just keep our standards lower.

We cannot keep up with our increasing public healthcare expenses yet people are still determined to keep private healthcare out of canada. Our own federal government and most provincial government studies have shown it's unsustainable. How can these healthy people deny sick people coverage because of their ideology? It selfish and uncaring. To this day it's still political suicide to propose a greater role for private healthcare outside of Alberta. Are Canadians that inconsiderate and selfish? In 2007 Nova Scotia had to shut down rural Emergency rooms for 6300 hours, here's the article http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.ht...396&k=35229 Seniors requiring serious care from a nuring home might have to wait 1 year to get in. How can anyone make a seriously ill senior wait a year when they might not even live that long. Why can't most canadians let the private sector reduce waiting times and financial burdens on governments so they can open Emergency rooms? We already pay for about a third of our healthcare expenses, would it hurt the fanatics out there to bring that up to 50% out of respect for the sick, elderly and poor in 2008 ?

After a promising Jan07 publication revealing DCA might fight cancer, Health Canada Ok'ld a Phase 2 study on some seriously ill cancer patients. DCA has highlighted the apparent need to fund research for drugs that are unprofitable. DCA is cheap and cannot be patented, therefore it's not a potentially profitable drug to fund research if you are a pharmaceutical company or a beauracratic lackey dolling out research dollars either. Dr. Michelakis appears to be laying the framework for other researchers to raise funding for other studies involving less profitable potential cures big pharmaceuticals won't fund. Which is almost as daunting a task as fighting cancer. They raised 800000 through personal donations ! Health Canada flexed some muscle and showed their independence from big pharmaceutical company control by approving a study to begin with and secondly for allowing a phase 2 level study rather than level 1, as they viewed it's long history as reassuring for its safety. Now if only the NRC and Breast Cancer organizations would only start funding drugs that don't make money... ---------------------- P.Fezziwig, contributor for Healthcare Reviews , http://www.healthcarereviews.com , building a better healthcare system through patient feedback.

Moore often compares the Canadian universal healthcare system to the Americans system. Usually this is aimed to draw attention to the 40 million uninsured Americans but critics reply Canada has unacceptably long waiting lists for major treatments as reason not to adopt that system. Canadian's like to think our system is the best in the world even though the World Health Organization puts us around the 30th spot. Hopefully this added public scrutiny will get Canadian's to wake up to the realty of a failing healthcare system. Not doing anything about it just doesn’t cut it anymore, should we wait till the baby boomers hit the system en masse before trying to change things? The Senate and 5 provinces have already reported unsustainable rates of healthcare cost increases. That leaves it to a parallel private and public system as a solution. Let’s be a little more proactive Canada, stop denying the sick access to healthcare for your own ideology.