Canada's publicly financed health insurance system has emerged as the dominant issue of the imminent national election campaign as the major political parties jostle at the starting gate.
With the population aging, waiting lines for care growing and doctors and nurses becoming sparse, especially in rural areas, opinion polls indicate that satisfaction with medical services has declined in the last decade. But a majority of Canadians still view their universal coverage system with patriotic pride -- seeing it as a national resource that distinguishes Canada from the US, where tens of millions go uninsured.
"There's no other issue of such vital and visceral significance to Canadians," said Prime Minister Paul Martin, who has been in office since Jean Chretien stepped down in December and is looking for his own mandate, while touring the country this month. He has promised to "provide a fix" that will last for a generation.
Battle cry
Martin has said he will seek a strong election mandate for the Liberal Party to give him momentum to fix the financially ailing healthcare system, during a meeting with provincial premiers this summer. He is expected to call the election next week for late June.
After 11 years in power, the governing Liberals have slipped badly in the polls because of political scandals. Although they are still likely to retain control of the House of Commons, they could lose dozens of seats in Quebec and Ontario, where they are squeezed between parties of the left and right. Under trying circumstances, they have picked up healthcare as their battle cry.
Martin is challenged on the right by Stephen Harper, a social conservative from Alberta who leads a newly united Conservative Party. Harper's slim chances to take power have improved because of the scandal over the up to US$75 million in contracts awarded to advertising companies that have contributed to the Liberal Party for doing little or no work on a program to counter separatism in Quebec in the 1990s.
Leeway
Under the Canadian healthcare system, all citizens and residents are covered by government-financed insurance that pays most medical expenses, excluding dentistry and routine eye care. Many of the 10 provinces, which administer the system, also provide various drug benefits.
Harper contends that the provinces should be given leeway to experiment with private-sector delivery of vital health services -- like CAT scans, MRIs and elective surgery. That, he says, would save money and shorten waiting times for services that often delay care for non-emergency conditions for months, and even years.
"It does not matter who delivers healthcare; it matters who can receive it," Harper said in a recent speech.
On the left, Jack Layton, a former city councilman in Toronto and the leader of the revitalized New Democratic Party, released a plan last week that would reverse recent modest privatization of diagnostic services and substantially increase federal aid to the provincial governments that manage the system. Financial shortfalls causing rationing of medical services have deepened in recent years.
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