CKNW Editorial
for March 6, 2000

Let me try to marry two stories and see how they get along together.

Premier Ralph Klein of Alberta, is introducing private capital into his healthcare system and the left of the country is setting its collective hair on fair. As usual, the cry of "American-style healthcare" is raised and the prospect of several million Canadians without proper health care is the image portrayed. It is, of course, just not on to discuss any alternatives to the way we do business … why Tommy Douglas, who was the star of the NDP leadership convention a couple of weeks ago, would roll over in his grave.

Let us, for God’s sake, not look at the facts.

We have no definition of health care so what ever spectacular tool is available to medical science is available to all without any constraints whatever. Doctors have only the skimpiest of controls on the referrals they make. We have a doctor driven system which is to say a sickness system, not a preventive care system. We treat nurses as if they were part doctor and part orderly. We are an aging population and the cost curve of health care is dramatically rising. Most of all, we act as if we can afford all this and what the future brings and we can’t.

Let’s also overlook the fact that Health care is a provincial not federal jurisdiction and the feds only got into the act by promising to pay half the costs if the provinces would agree to nationwide portability and access. That 50 cent dollar is now a 15 cent dollar yet the tax money still goes to the federal government.

The provincial governments are now put in this position – the feds will cut back even further on the tax transfers if the provinces don’t obey the Canada Health Act which they can’t obey because the Feds haven’t lived up to their side of the bargain.

I don’t know about you but I can see only two answers to this for the provinces – either they get more money and have it increase exponentially as the cost curve for health care continues to rise or they look somewhere else, that is the private sector for money.

Before going any further let us lay this old NDP saw to rest – we can’t have anyone profiting from health care. Of all the stupid things the NDP have said this is in the top echelon. Doctors profit, nurses profit, health care workers profit, construction companies and their workers profit, many home care providers profit … indeed the health ministry including the minister profit. There is no free lunch and we should stop pretending that there is.

But supposing we decide that whatever the cost will be, we will accept no outside capital and we will permit no two tiered system, however many safeguards we put in. As a political decision we will let Tommy Douglas rest in peace. Then here is the second point I wish the first point to marry.

Diane Francis in her Province article yesterday calls for, amongst other things, the abolition of the capital gains tax. Now again, what’s left of NDP hair is set on fire. Why this is just one more corporate handout. Perhaps it is but it pays off in spades. If you truly want to see clean industry come to B.C. just remove this tax and see not only the business arrive at what will once again be a tax haven – because there was a time Canada had to capital gains tax. Then watch your tax revenues increase from both the straight corporate income tax and the income and other taxes paid by all the workers. You solve many environmental problems by having environmentally clean industries, increase your taxes and provide job opportunities for our young bright graduates thus stemming the flow of our brightest to the United States..

It may not be pretty – perhaps it offends against the moral precepts of many – but it is a truism to say that money goes to where it is best treated. Capital has no loyalty – if it ever did that’s been erased by globalization. And, globalization is here to stay no matter how much we might moan about it and demonstrate against it. For those who haven’t done so, rush out and get a copy of Tom Friedman’s The Lexus And The Olive Tree … globalization is a reality and the trick is to capture our share of what he calls the "electronic herd", which is to say the floating pools of money, then keep it here.

If we adjusted our tax regime so as to attract our share of the "electronic herd" and for once in our existence stopped the politics of envy practiced by the left we would find ourselves prospering, our government coffers starting to fill again, and our ability to fund our social programs restored.

But we want it both ways, don’t we – the best social programs in the world while driving away the capital needed to provide them.

What this means, my friends, is that instead of having foreign capital investing in Canada so that we can afford our lifestyle, we will have to make a deal to save our programs by permitting private capital to come in the form of private insurers. In short, do we want foreign capital by way of taxes on foreign investments in our country … or do we want to wait until medicare is bankrupt and then go to private capital on their terms.

The choice is ours.