CLC hosts meeting to fight health care privatization in Canada

Looking at strategies to save public medicare within the current Canadian political context

Ottawa (16 June 2006) - The Canadian Labour Congress is hosting a meeting of top labour leaders and policy experts Friday in Ottawa to discuss strategies to combat the growing trend toward privatization of health care.

The all-day event is being held at the Marriott Hotel, 100 Kent St.

The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) will be represented at the meeting. NUPGE is the CLC's second-largest affiliated union with 340,000 members across the country.

"The consensus view of Canadians, confirmed over and over in all the research studies, is that private for-profit care will not deliver better, faster, cheaper or more comprehensive health care services," says NUPGE president James Clancy.

"To make matters worse, we know private for-profit care requires abandoning the values of caring for and about one another that led us to establish public medicare in the first place," he argues.

"But, we also know there is room for improvement. A top priority for reform must be shorter wait times. Too many Canadians are simply waiting too long for the critical services they require," Clancy says.

"Again, one thing about the search for a solution to long wait times is plain: the reforms must, and can, be done within the public system. We're looking forward to contributing ideas and hearing from others at this CLC roundtable about how to preserve and make better our public medicare system through innovative reforms within the system."

Private care costs more

CLC president Ken Georgetti says it is well known that private health care is more expensive than public health care.

“Even though it is documented that most of the growth in health care costs has been on the private side, and even though the Romanow Royal Commission convincingly argued that further privatization would fundamentally undercut medicare as a 'moral enterprise,' there is considerable uncertainty as to precisely what needs to be done to stop privatization in the current political context,” Georgetti says.

“This roundtable should help us erase that uncertainty and define the next steps in the struggle against privatization.”

The event opens with remarks by Georgetti on the role of the labour movement in the ongoing public debate on the future of public health care in Canada. Also speaking will be Judith Maxwell - former president, Canadian Policy Research Networks, and Michael Mendelson of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy.

The implications of private health care on "access, equity and the economy" will also be addressed, including the impact of increased reliance on private health insurance and greater use of for-profit providers of health care.

Panelists include Armine Yalnizyan of the Atkinson Foundation and Toronto Social Planning Council, Pat Armstrong of York University and Colleen Fuller, author of Caring for Profit and The Bottom Line.

Medicare can be saved

The question of whether the public medicare system can be saved will be addressed by Greg Marchildon, former executive director of the Romanow Commission, while the role of governments will be discussed by Toronto lawyer Steven Shrybman, Marie-Claude Premont of McGill University in Montreal and Tim Sale, minister of health for Manitoba.

The day concludes with a session that addresses how various concerned groups and individuals can work together to save Canada's public medicare system. Speakers will include Dennis Howlett of the National Anti-Poverty Organization, Kathleen Connors of the Canadian Health Coalition and John Urquhart of the Council of Canadians.

Barb Byers, a CLC executive vice-president, will present closing remarks. NUPGE