PV staff
Tens of thousands of people are expected to rally tomorrow, September 1, on the same day that the Alberta government’s new healthcare legislation takes effect. Protestors warn that the new legislation introduces two-tiered care and widespread privatization, and they are calling on Ottawa to enforce the Canada Health Act which prohibits such threats to Medicare across Canada.
Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government passed Bill 11, the Health Statutes Amendment Act in December. The legislation establishes a two-tiered (“dual practice”) model for healthcare in Alberta, by allowing “flexibly participating” doctors to provide medically necessary care either through the publicly funded system or by private payment on a service-by-service basis.
This change allows for queue-jumping, and contravenes the Canada Health Act’s core elements of universality, accessibility, comprehensiveness and prohibition of extra-billing and user fees. Medicare is based on the principle that care is provided on the basis of need, not according to who can pay.
Under the new legislation, the Alberta healthcare system will generate huge profits for private insurance companies and increase their already substantial economic and political power. These companies – some of the largest monopoly corporations – will use Alberta as a stepping stone in their drive for increased privatization across Canada. In the process, they will jeopardize public healthcare throughout the country.
Health coalitions warn that establishing this new foothold for two-tier, privatized healthcare in Canada means that single-payer healthcare is no longer protected in trade agreements including through a renegotiated USMCA or other deal with the United States.
Since Bill 11 was first introduced, healthcare workers and health coalitions have repeatedly called on Ottawa to enforce the Canada Health Act and take action against the legislation. But despite this, as well as the obvious threat to public healthcare, the federal government has been largely silent.
The only public response from Ottawa was the statement in August by federal Health Minister Majorie Michel that she sent a “letter of concern” to the Alberta government. This response, made only a month away from the legislation’s implementation, is wholly insufficient and is reflective of Ottawa’s inaction against other province’s moves toward privatization.
Public healthcare won – and defended – through struggle
As statement from the Communist Party of Canada notes that “Medicare was not a gift from government – as with all social programs, it was won through long and determined struggle by working people. Decades before the CCF/NDP stood up to and fought the medical establishment and implemented Canada’s first universal health program in Saskatchewan in 1962, workers and socialists had pressed for socialized medicine. This included the efforts of Communist Party members like Dr. Norman Bethune, James Litterick and Fred Rose.
“As part of his work for socialized medicine, Bethune organized the ‘Montreal Group for the Security of the People’s Health’ which released a detailed set of proposals for a socialized provincial medical system on the eve Quebec’s 1936 provincial election. The group’s work brought a large part of the population into action on the issue of public healthcare.
“The first motion for provincial healthcare in Manitoba was introduced in the legislature by James Litterick who was elected for the Communist Party in 1936. The motion was defeated, but reflected the growing demand among the working class. The first legislation for a cross-Canada healthcare system was introduced in the federal legislature by Fred Rose, a Communist Party member who was elected for the Labor-Progressive Party in 1941 and re-elected in 1943.”
Communist Party leader Drew Garvie says that these kinds of efforts were happening all over the country, and a reminder of the decades-long struggle of working people for universal public healthcare.
“Now, in the face of corporations’ relentless drive for privatization, the same scale of struggle is required to defend public healthcare.
“The Communist Party of Canada stands with health coalitions and healthcare workers across the country on September 1. We reiterate our longstanding call for the federal government to enforce the Canada Health Act and oppose Alberta’s Bill 11 and all efforts by other provinces to weaken, jeopardize and privatize public healthcare.
“But protecting public healthcare means adequately funding it. The Communist Party calls on Ottawa and all provincial governments to immediately restore health funding that has been cut from the public system, and to increase it to allow for the expansion of public healthcare to include universal vision, dental, pharmacare, mental health and long-term care.”
[Photo of Charlottetown, PE demonstration against Bill 11: Friends of Medicare Alberta]
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