Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

Acrimony among the premiers

The acrimony at this month's premiers' conference over the role of the federal government in setting national health-care standards has been presented as largely a conflict of wealthy vs. poorer provinces. And while that is no doubt part of the equation, one also needs to see the crucial role ideology is playing in the fraying of Canada's national government.

It is not simply that Alberta and Ontario are Canada's wealthiest provinces, it is also important to note that their governments are the most committed to taking power away from the federal government and turning it over to the private sector.

In post-Second World War Canada, the federal government has played an important role in protecting ordinary people from the worst effects of an uninhibited profit motive. To those for whom profits are everything, governments, especially an active federal government running universal social programs, are a source of power that must be curtailed. And so government program spending in Canada has been cut from 18 to 12 per cent of the national income over the last 15 years.

Indeed, the nation state is under assault throughout the world as global financiers and capitalists, aided by the International Monetary Fund and other similar organizations, facilitate the unimpeded movement of capital and the maximizing of profits. Globalization itself is not a bad thing. But a globalization that erodes the dignity of workers, social programs for the poor, and publicly funded health and education must be strenuously resisted. The key institution for resisting such erosion has traditionally been a strong national government.

In Canada, federal governments have abdicated that responsibility and have instead presided over the slow dismantling of those programs and the devolution of decision-making power to the provinces. The provinces, however, are less capable and often less willing to protect health and social programs and the rights of workers.

And so when Canada's premiers squabble over the federal role in health care, we are seeing not so much an effort to protect provincial autonomy as the latest skirmish in the campaign to privatize health care. It is only reasonable to expect the federal government to try to ensure that all Canadians have the same basic level of access to government services, such as health care. A government that believes in a balance between the rights of citizens and the need for private enterprise would surely try to maintain a modicum of equality across the country.

However, as far back as 1995, Prime Minister Jean Chretien said that Ottawa should return responsibility for medicare to the provinces. And so while the federal Liberals bluster about privatized health care in Alberta and try to capitalize on public opposition to Bill 11, it seems they have no basic disagreement with the drift to privatization.

There is a belief that only the private sector can stimulate meaningful economic reform. However, the quest for profits often leads to the building of over-capacity into the economy and the ignoring of needs whose fulfillment does not lead to sufficient economic gain. Indeed, an interventionist approach by government can sometimes be more effective in applying major technological change, be more egalitarian and strengthen social programs. The net result of such an approach can be a better quality of life and even longer life expectancy for the general population.

The problem now is not an excess of activism, but rather drift and a belief in the inevitability of privatization and globalization. However, we do not have to accept growing inequality or the disembowelment of medicare. Nor do we need to bow to those premiers who aggressively put forward an agenda of decentralization that would gut the federal government's ability to help those who are most vulnerable. Canada and Canadians deserve better than that.

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