John,
Do you know what the biggest lie in Canadian politics is?
It’s that we have this magical healthcare system that is central to our national identity.
I’ve often heard Canada described as “like America but with free healthcare”.
It is a total myth that Canada has some great medical system which can only be preserved by the political left.
In reality, we have a crumbling, dysfunctional system which is being made MUCH worse by non-stop mass immigration which is totally overwhelming it.
Here are the facts:
Canadian healthcare is not free. We all pay for it with our unreasonably high taxes. In fact, Canada has the fourth highest per capita healthcare costs amongst developed countries.
Canadian healthcare is not the best. Nowhere close. Despite being among the most expensive, most international ratings have us around 30th in the world, lagging behind just about every developed country.
Mass immigration over recent years has completely overwhelmed the system. A significant portion of newcomers are coming through the family reunification program who are often older (parents, and grandparents) and more dependent on the healthcare system. Sometimes they are coming here specifically to take advantage of our healthcare system despite their families not paying into it!
Canadian healthcare also has the dubious distinction of having the worst wait times of any developed country. This year around 17,000 people died while waiting for medical care.
Does that sound like a developed country to you, John?
And yet, if anyone calls for significant and much needed reforms to our healthcare system, leftists start foaming at the mouth and hurling accusations about “American-style healthcare”.
As if our healthcare system is some sort of untouchable sacred cow!
It's time to look to other countries, find what works elsewhere, and make major reforms here — and believe it or not, we can look to countries other than America as examples!
We need to learn from the European countries with superior and more cost efficient healthcare systems, literally all of which are mixed systems with public AND private providers for medical care.
Max and the PPC have been calling for Canada to move to a European-style mixed system for years now. It is the obvious solution for anyone who has spent time researching this topic.
Technically, healthcare is supposed to be 100% provincial jurisdiction. But in reality the federal government is much too involved.
Provinces are dependent on the feds for funds (Canada Health Transfer payments) to pay for their healthcare systems and for decades the federal government has politicized these transfer payments, holding them hostage unless provinces meet their demands.
Here’s the PPC plan to get Ottawa out of the way and fix our healthcare system:
- Repeal the Canada Health Act which dictates a very bureaucratized management of healthcare, and encourage provincial and territorial governments to adopt European-style, mixed public-private healthcare systems.
- Replace the Canada Health Transfer cash payments with a permanent transfer of tax points of equivalent value to the provinces and territories to give them complete autonomy over their healthcare systems.
- Stop mass immigration and in particular radically reduce the number of newcomers coming to Canada through the family reunification program to relieve stress from already overburdened healthcare systems.
The PPC doesn’t believe in sacred cows. For us, nothing is off limits. If there is a problem affecting Canadians, we are going to step in and solve it.
We don’t have to just accept the lesser of two evils. We can support policies we actually believe in. We can demand better policies for our country.
Help me fight for pragmatic solutions like this with a $13 donation today! <[link removed]>
Cheers,
Daniel Tyrie
PPC Executive Director
P.S.: If you have trouble finding where you can donate, you can just click this link! [link removed]
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PPC - Gatineau, QC, Canada
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