Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff sends an open letter to Stephen Harper, demanding to know his position on a bunch of health care-related issues. For some reason Wells’s Fourth Rule comes to mind. The text of Ignatieff’s letter:
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff sends an open letter to Stephen Harper, demanding to know his position on a bunch of health care-related issues. For some reason Wells’s Fourth Rule comes to mind. The text of Ignatieff’s letter:
For Immediate Release
April 20, 2011
Open Letter from Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff to Stephen Harper on the future of health care
Dear Mr. Harper:
No issue in this election is of greater concern to Canadians than the future of our cherished health care system.
In your five years in office, you have done nothing to secure the future of the system or to prepare for the 2014 expiration of the current Health Accord, which was negotiated by Prime Minister Paul Martin and Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh in 2004.
Some have ascribed this lack of concern and action to the general improvised approach of your regime. However, I am concerned that your inaction is rooted in a deep hostility towards the fundamental principles of the health care system, which is clear in many of your statements through the years:
The “prescription” referred to in Mr. Gratzer’s book “Code Blue” is to move from a universal system of publicly funded health care to a U.S.-style system of private medical savings accounts and private insurance.
Unlike you, I do not believe that public health care makes Canada “a second-tier socialistic country.” Furthermore, I believe that our system is not “killing people,” as you have said, but is, in fact saving thousands of lives every year.
This is a serious matter. Your clear hostility towards our public health care system is important not just in terms of your inaction over the last five years, but even more so in terms of your plans for the future.
Quite simply, the $11 billion of unexplained cuts in your platform and your proposed spending spree on F-35 fighter jets, U.S.-style mega-prisons, corporate tax cuts, and income-splitting for the wealthy will ensure that there are not sufficient resources to sustain our health care system moving forward.
We believe this is a deliberate strategy on your part – to starve a system you have never believed in and never hesitated to attack and belittle.
There are, therefore, three questions you need to answer for Canadians:
I know you do not like answering questions. But Canadians have a right to answers on this fundamental issue.
I believe that a Canadian prime minister should champion public health care, not deride it. And that is exactly the approach I would take if I have the honour of serving in that role. To that end, we have proposed a broad range of substantive reforms and improvements not just to health care, but to the overall health of Canadians. I urge you to look them up at www.liberal.ca/healthcare.
In the meantime, I – and all Canadians – look forward to your answers to these questions.
Michael Ignatieff
Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada