Health care “the issue” in Canada’s June 28 elections

Canadian health care is such a great role model for U.S. policy makers that Canadians apparently think it stinks. Politicians call it the health care monster. So the election is about health care and tax cuts. Do these scare tactics look familiar?

 

Canadian health care is such a great role model for U.S. policy makers that Canadians apparently think it stinks. Politicians call it the health care monster. So the election is about health care and tax cuts. Do these scare tactics look familiar?

The statement: “Stephen Harper has been clear about his plan for Canada. He has said over and over, and again this past week, that his intention is to reduce taxes until they are lower than those in the United States.”—Liberal Leader Paul Martin, Rideau Hall, May 23, 2004.

- The message: Heartless Conservatives want to cut health care and other social programs.

- The reality: No surprise to us that taxes and health care are at the centre of political debate on Day 1 of the campaign.

On the attack, the Liberals try to portray Stephen Harper and his Conservatives as tax cutters who would gut health care and other social programs.

In ads appearing in newspapers across the country this weekend, the Liberals said Mr. Harper’s “number one priority is tax cuts” and the Conservative objective of tax rates below those in the U.S. would mean “cutting vital programs and services, at a time when we need to reinvest in health . . .”

In his first speech of the campaign, Mr. Martin talked about the supposed dire consequences of reducing taxes to below U.S. levels.

“You cannot have a health-care system like Canada’s, you can’t have social programs like Canada’s, with taxation levels like those of the United States,” Mr. Martin said.

The result of Mr. Harper’s taxation policy, Mr. Martin added, would “lead us to abandon the more vulnerable among us.”

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