Happy New Year, I guess.
This year may not turn out to be much better than the last one, but I do have a question for the first day of 2025:
What happens to our Canadian public health care system if Donald Trump and sundry unsavoury Canadian characters like Stockwell Day succeed in their effort to see Canada absorbed into the United States?
Does it simply disappear on Manifest Destiny Day? Or does it hang around for a couple of years disappearing a piece at a time before we have to start buying our own U.S.-style “health insurance”? (In other words, basically what’s already happening in Mr. Day’s adopted Alberta home, only even faster.)
I name Mr. Day, the former leader of the Canadian Alliance/Conservative Party of Canada and a former member of the Alberta Legislative Assembly, because he has taken to tweeting or whatever it’s called nowadays about how so many Canadians wish soon-to-be-president-again Trump would just offer us all citizenship in the Benighted States of America so we could have a stronger dollar and less “cultural Marxism,” whatever that is.
And I mention public health care – instead of, say, our Canada Pension Plan, Mounties in scarlet uniforms, or spelling colour with a U – because the topic of health care seems to be on the minds of an awful lot of American citizens these days south of the Medicine Line.
Moralizing tut-tutting notwithstanding, quite a few of our American cousins seem to have turned young Luigi Mangione – who stands accused of shooting the CEO of a huge “health insurance” company in the back in New York on Dec. 4 – into a folk hero, unrelentingly and unavoidably lauded in Internet memes, video reels, and songs.
John Brown’s body may lie a-moulderin’ in the grave, but Luigi marches on – albeit surrounded by about half the Philadelphia and New York police departments – with everyone in one famous perp walk weirdly wearing pretty much the same getups as Lee Harvey Oswald and his Dallas Police escort on Nov. 24, 1963, at the moment Jack Ruby rounded the corner with his little pistol in hand.
There is a reason for this, and it is an aspect of the United States’ disastrous private health care system that we Canadians seldom think about and, in fact, many of us know nothing about because we never have to encounter it in our own lives.
To wit: Not only does the U.S. health care system still leave close to 30 million Americans without any health insurance whatsoever, but the expensive private health insurance held by a march larger percentage of U.S. citizens is often not worth the paper it’s printed on.
The first factoid is well known to Canadians. Indeed, it is a matter of national pride shared by most Canadians that there is no such uninsured minority in our Dominion.
The second part, though, has passed under the radar for years, never mentioned by the fierce ideological lobby that works as relentlessly as rust to undermine Canadian public health care. Indeed, it is rarely noted even by the most determined defenders of Canadian public health insurance.
But all of a sudden, thanks to Mr. Mangione – or whoever it was who in fact pulled the trigger on UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, that question being unsettled in either law or fact – we are inundated on Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram, and whatever with videos and memes protesting the fact understood by almost all Americans that even if you spend tens of thousands of those strong U.S. dollars every year, the health insurance you’re paying for may well be worthless.
In fact, a huge percentage of Americans will probably get nothing when it really matters, while the Brian Thompsons of this world will get a $12-million US bonus for their fine work using an intentionally faulty algorithm to ensure their customers don’t get the coverage they’re paying for.
Canadian advocates of private health care complain about wait times for surgeries, claim in spite of evidence to the contrary that private surgical clinics will shorten the lineups in the public system, tout the benefits of “choice,” demand the “freedom” to jump the line, but they never mention the literally murderous fraud perpetrated by the U.S. health insurance industry and its executive class on their hapless customers.
Oh, but things are different in Europe, the likes of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith whisper, we’re not advocating the American system. But that is exactly what they want, in fact, and what they intend to impose on us, by hook or by crook.
What do you think the purpose of a “Ministry of Red Tape Reduction,” like Alberta’s, is? It sure as hell isn’t to ensure that consumers aren’t robbed, workers are safe on the job, or commercial health insurance gets you the health care coverage you paid for!
The penalty suffered by Mr. Thompson for his misdeeds may have been harsh, and the glee of our neighbours at the deed may be unnerving, but this, my fellow Canadians, is a teaching moment, and we would be remiss not to make use of it.
Former PC premier Ed Stelmach steps down today as Covenant Health board chair
While we are on the joint topics of a new year and Canadian health care, I note that Ed Stelmach, Alberta’s former Progressive Conservative premier who could fairly be described as the Father of Alberta Health Services, steps down as chair of the board of directors of Covenant Health today.
Mr. Stelmach was one of the saner premiers in Alberta history, and his crowning achievement was the creation of an integrated health care system in the province. He left politics in 2011 and in 2016 took on the role of board chair at Covenant Health, the Roman Catholic Church owned but publicly financed health care organization.
So it was both sad and disturbing to see Premier Danielle Smith summon Mr. Stelmach in November 2023 to act as a validator of her plan to smash the province-wide AHS health care agency to smithereens, a scheme that appears to be intended to sow chaos in a health system on the brink of collapse as a precursor to massive privatization, as well as to get some revenge for its public health measures during the pandemic.
Ms. Smith clearly intends to use the transfer of AHS hospitals to Covenant as a wedge to open the door to full privatization of public health care facilities.
Mr. Stelmach’s 2023 endorsement of Ms. Smith’s plan didn’t sound all that stirring. I am sure he felt constrained in what he could say by his role at Covenant Health, which depends on the government both for funding and independence. So while he will remain as Covenant’s Past Chair for this year, he’s better off out of it.
The Covenant statement on Dec. 19 that noted Mr. Stelmach’s upcoming departure barely acknowledged his service to the organization, or to public health care in Alberta, focusing instead on his replacement, former broadcaster Tim Spelliscy.
Why doesn’t Stockwell Day just saddle up a hadrosaur and ride off into the sunset? Hasn’t he done enough already?
The way it sit sits now 2025 is already a write off. You can probably add 2026 to that list too. So let’s raise a glass and a toast to 2027.
PSA: The postings on Xitter are called xits, pronounced ‘shits’.
When my son was undergoing cancer treatment at Foothills our connection with his oncologist became very close. He told us about the time he headed to California to study a new drug and accompany the researching physician as he made his rounds. They entered a patient’s room. The doctor examined and announced that the patient needed an MRI. Standing nearby was the insurance lady with a clipboard. No go, she said, not covered. PET Scan? CT Scan? No and no. The last option was an X ray. That was covered. The oncologist said to himself, “I will never practice medicine in this country.”
I told this story before on this blog about my sister, who lives in California, fainting. She had never done that before and went limp like a rag doll. Prudence demanded we get her to the emergency room just to make sure everything was okay. She has decent insurance but the incident cost her two grand for a bag of saline and a cardiogram. I remember the insurance person with the clipboard with a half inch thick stack of papers well. The lesson I learned through the private health care system is the opposite of what would be sound practice – you’re taking a big risk going to the emergency room. It might be nothing and cost you dearly.
We have to remember that Stockwell (Doris) Day appears to believe that The Flintstones was a documentary. In all of my reading of the Bible, nowhere have I come across where Jesus was ministering to the dinosaurs.
JE: Surely you have to read the Old Testament for the bits about the dinosaurs, no? DJC
Don’t the “young Earth” creationists argue that the dinosaurs died in the “Great Flood”? Which, in their worldview, would still mean Jesus could not have been preaching to dinos.
Just sayin’.
This really disturbs me that there are Canadians of some stature that are advocating for us joining the U.S. To this I reply (in a way that Americans will understand) that Donald Trump can have my Canadian citizenship when he rips it from my cold, dead hands.
Happy New Year, David, and his faithful readers.
Today’s column did not go where I thought it would. When I read ‘What happens to our Canadian public health care system if Donald Trump…’ I expected the rest of the sentence to be ‘if Donald Trump starts complaining about our state funded health care system?’
I have heard the case made that state funded health care can be an advantage when a company is looking for a place to locate a factory, since the company will not have to provide medical insurance for its employees. As such, it is not a difficult to imagine Donald Trump putting Canadian health care on his list of grievances Canada must address if we want to avoid his 25% tariff.
Given how Danielle Smith has done all she can do to capitulate to Donald Trump’s border concerns, I don’t want to think about how she would respond to his demand we privatize our health care.
Bob: We’d best not give him ideas, eh? In another life, when I was the auto-industry reporter for The Globe and Mail‘s Report on Business, I went to Detroit to interview Joseph E. Cappy, the last president of American Motors Corp. and at the time a vice-president of international operations for Chrysler Corp., about the future of the Brampton, Ont., assembly plant built by AMC and the year before inherited by Chrysler. Why were so much of AMC’s and Chrysler’s assembly operations in Canada, I asked him, when there must be political pressure on U.S.-based companies to locate the best auto industry jobs in the States? There were two reasons, he said. The first was that Canadian workers were better educated, so it cost less to train them and they were more productive faster and made fewer mistakes. If memory serves, he actually told me they could read an instruction manual. The second was Canada’s universal health care system. Unionized Canadian workers could be paid the same as U.S. workers in U.S. dollars, he said, and because the employer didn’t have to pay for their health care as a negotiated benefit, they still cost significantly less per hour. It’s interesting in hindsight that rather than press for Canadian-style health care to make their industry more competitive, U.S. automakers in particular and industry in general put their efforts into eliminating unions that would fight for things like health care benefits for members. DJC
By coincidence, I stumbled upon a transcript of the Alberta Advantage Podcast celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Great Herald Strike. Wow, that was certainly a cast of scabs and heroes. What an awful moment in Alberta’s awful history of labour non-relations.
Lefty: It’s all history now. I think I’m the Hiroo Onoda of Local 115A of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. I won’t hand in my picket sign unless Andy Marshall personally brings me a letter from the President of Unifor. When I’m paid out, I’ll donate my accumulated strike pay to the nearest university labour studies program. DJC
Does Trump or Day know that if Canada was an American state, we would have 54 electoral votes (our population is just slightly higher than California, which has 54). Given that Canadian’s don’t like Trump, therefore it is reasonable to conclude Harris would have received 280 electoral votes – enough to win the election. Just saying. Math is hard for reformer/conservative types.
OK, that paragraph was just to troll the MAGAists. If Canada was an American state with 54 electoral votes, the total college would be 538 + 54 = 592. The winning amount is therefore 592 ÷ 2 = 296, so Trump might have still won, but it would have been a squeaker.
And who knows about the Senate and House of Congress. With Canada, I suspect Congress would be solidly democrat, but Senate still barely republican.
Fortunately, I believe the whole point is moot. I simply can’t see, even in a dystopian nightmare, any future in which Canada becomes part of the “excited states”. We are too different. Smith & Day can dream all they want.
Honestly, the Americans are better off becoming provinces of Canada. Think of it, decent health care when we “snowbird” in winter, no currency exchange, etc. The Americans gain a federal government not locked in a “two party doom loop”, a Governor General who is required to remove felonius leaders, et al.
Where does Stockwell Day live? He must be in his mid to late 70s.
I am always surprised by how quickly conservatives will abandon their principles/life’s work to appease the latest iteration of right-wing populist. I had considerable respect for Ed Stelmach. Not any more. It is my understanding that Smith wants to hand-over many currently state functions to churches. This could be a disaster for health care in Alberta.
Good question, Keith. He’s 74. He lives in Penticton, in social democratic British Columbia, at least according to the Wikipedia. He was born in Ontario, like a lot of our worst actors here in Alberta. This raises an interesting question: Is a province you adopted and then abandoned still your adopted province? Perhaps I shouldn’t have used that phrase. Nevetheless, I think I’ll leave it be. He’s ours now, whether we like it or not, or even whether he likes it or not. DJC
Thanks for the history lesson. I thought it was just a song, kinda like Ring Around the Rosy. As they say about the who learnt their history; they’re condemned to watching it rhyme.
Emily: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_Body DJC
nothing stopping kevin & stock from replacing their postal code with a zip code; they don’t have to wait around for the dear leader to flex his imperialist muscle.
in the meantime, it’s noted that the idea of Cascadia is resurrecting and gaining more attention in california and the pacific northwest, as the nightmare south of our border approaches reality.
folks in b.c. & ab may have some future hope.
I quite enjoyed the responses to Stockwell Day’s imbecilic tweet. He must be the most deluded public figure in Canada, quite an achievement when you consider how fierce the competition is here in Alberta.
Happy New Year, David, and thanks for all of your efforts over the years.
And then Elon goes and changes his name. Really, what can you rely on?
Hi David
I think 2025 is the year of the extreme right unfortunately. Trump will seal the deal in the US, stops the climate change momentum, and spreads his venon around the world. In Canada Pierre Poilievre will push us back at least 40 years and will install private health care once and for all. He will also normalize extreme right wing views in Canada which is what Harper was not capable of doing because the time was not right. Now we are ripe for it. With 46% support for Danielle Smith in Alberta and the extreme Poilievre party with 24 points ahead of the Liberals they will not campaign on extreme views but just like Danielle Smith did in Alberta, once in the throne lies and deceipt will flow which seems to be now acceptable to at least 50% of Canadians. Canada, the country I was very proud of will disappear this year. It is already in comma. To me it is sad, but for many it is great news.
Now that retired long-serving US military personnel have become domestic terrorists, and the Tesla Cybertrucks are killing their owners, let’s consider the crazy ride that brought us to 2025.
Luigi is the new folk hero. Though there is a strong and concerted effort to make him a terrorist, it doesn’t seem to be working. Social media has passed judgment on the powers that be in NYC and have determined that they are only interested in saving CEOs’ lives, and to hell with everyone else. The best part is that a soon-to-be indicted mayor is trying to turn Luigi into a personal crusade for decency. Do you get the feeling that public officials are so bereft of shame, they will do anything to remind everyone that they are the most important people ever?
I have no doubt that the court will seek the death penalty for Luigi, and he will be hailed as a martyr for the people. There is no way he’s going to get a fair trial, that much is certain. I’m certain that trial by jury will be denied, because that’s the road to an instant acquittal. The people have spoken, and no one trusts the powerful anymore.
We are to witness a massive social breakdown in real time. Let’s see if anyone other than billionaires show up at Trump’s second inaugural.
Rumor has it that Dani and most of her staff are going, allegedly at a cost exceeding that of orthopedic surgeries for 1000 people.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-orthopedic-surgery-doctor-dispute-1.7411614
If true, it would prove that even ordinary staffers and peons don’t have to be billionaires in order to act like oligarchs. Surely the UCP and the populist premier wouldn’t put rampant egomania and lust for power ahead of the suffering of 1000 people, many of whom voted for them! Surely their arrogance and sense of entitlement doesn’t go that far! Leopards don’t eat people’s faces; we all know that!
Note: rumor source is the notoriously unreliable X platform. Couldn’t possibly be true!!!
Stockwell Day has seldom met a bad idea he didn’t fall for. His political judgement is suspect and his career in politics supports that. He at times seemed like the patron saint of losing political causes.
Of course, most Canadians don’t want to join the US and their bad health care system is one big reason. Yes, Canada has longer waiting times, but that in part is because in the US many can’t even get in line without enough money or great (ie. expensive) health insurance. I am not that surprised about what happened with Mangione, just that it didn’t happen sooner. The ever increasing gap between the rich and poor in the US is a recipe for more social unrest and potentially disaster. In a country with so many guns this could easily get worse. I doubt the populist messaging of the incoming US administration will do much to really resolve the fundamental problems.
Yes, Conservatives in Canada appear to be likely to win soon also, but their platform remains very unclear. So I doubt they will have a mandate to do much if anything with health care. However of course that may not stop them from trying.
Happy New Year David and thanks for another year. I took on my moniker in response to an article of yours from years back where you suggested that people ask an American friend about how private health care works out for them. You are quite right to emphasize that private health insurance is not your friend and may provide the coverage you hoped for, but it is worse than that. They will not only determine which treatments you are eligible for and which you aren’t, but you will have to find new doctors if your coverage area changes; at the whim of the insurance company. You will be on the phone a lot with insurance companies, usually during the worst times in your life. And it will be expensive. I guarantee you will end up paying more out of pocket than you pay now in taxes. The only purpose I can see for private health care is to let capitalism do what it does — extract as much value as it can. Health care is a juicy prize because it is, literally, your money or your life.
Remember when Tyler Shandro lost his s#!t in a physician-neighbour’s driveway, because the good doctor called him (and his wife) out for setting up their insurance-brokerage business? At the same time Shandro and his UCP cohorts had commenced to beating the public health care system to pieces? Starting with the family doctors and trashing the AMA contract?
Never before had any health minister gone after physicians like that. The AMA had always been a powerful player in the province, and if you were paying attention over the years, every new health minister traditionally made a generous “gift” to the doctors, by way of homage. Not this guy. He sneered at them. Total disrespect. And, they HATED him. “Shandy”, they called him. No doubt all that malice on both sides, he towards them and vice versa, contributed largely to him getting the boot last election.
Mind you, now the doctors have a potted plant in that portfolio who isn’t particularly a “Maleficent”, but doesn’t have to be. She’s just happily dozing along while the whole thing is crumbling around her. For sure, she must be pinching herself! With her mildly medical education, “rehab assistant”, she gets to be the boss of all of them! A perfect patsy for the drug store barons, private surgical corporations, “tele-doc” companies, Turkish Tylenol pushers, and- private health insurance companies.
Fair comment, Betts. But, personally, I think Ms. LaGrange is much sharper than commentators on my blog often give her credit for being. She has an agenda and she is being successful carrying it out. There is a reason the premier has trusted her with two important portfolios. She does what Ms. Smith wants, and she doesn’t mess it up with mistakes that cause the government political problems. I think it’s a mistake to dismiss her as a dummy. DJC
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
At the risk of being repetitive, which I probably am, our neighbour when we lived briefly in Texas had a $380,000 bill (1996 U s dollars) from the hospital when she and her daughter were in a motor vehicle collision. This was after the doctors and hospital where she worked gave her some discounted and free care. That is around $746,000 in Canadian dollars to-day. This is insane. We do not want U S type health care.
It is totally beyond my comprehension that Danielle Smith who, reportedly, lived in social housing for a period when she was growing up could ever think that privately paid for health care is a good idea. I can’t imagine who she could think that she could afford it. On the other hand, perhaps, she is like our former neighbour who was actually British, who dismissed my concern that there was little publicly paid for health care in the U S. She figured that health care misfortune wouldn’t happen to her, I guess.
Reminds me of the story that Ayn Rand ended up using publicly funded health care at the end of her life in the U S. She had paid into social security and, consequently, was entitled to these benefits, but they seem to be totally contrary to her long-propounded philosophy.
I have spent some time with various aliases on various platforms. Not pretty. We’re in for it now. https://youtu.be/t76JGcMp0cM?t=1
I smiled at the comment on hanged and hung. My mother said more than once as I was growing up and learning to speak coherently that “people are hanged; pictures are hung.” I notice, however, that even the British, who should know the differences between hanged and hung (as in hanged, drawn and quartered although it was not done in that order) sometimes use these terms incorrectly, much as those who use lay when they should use lie.
As an aside and for anyone’s edification, Robert Cook was the last person hanged in Alberta (1960) but no one now seems to know who he was. The February 26 and 27 1984 Edmonton Sun had two articles by Brian Swarbrick totalling 10 pages on the investigation and subsequent trial and left the reader questioning whether or not the authorities hanged the right man. The topic is worthy of research.
The way you draw parallels between historical figures and contemporary events really makes the content engaging and thought-provoking. It’s a reminder of how much history influences the present, even when the connections aren’t immediately obvious.
I especially appreciated how you explored the enduring symbolism of figures like John Brown while juxtaposing them with today’s challenges and characters. It’s intriguing to think about how the ideals and struggles of the past resonate with and inform current political movements and societal debates.
Your discussion about Luigi and the implications for modern leadership and activism was particularly compelling. It’s a stark reminder of how leadership styles, motives, and legacies shape public perception and political momentum. The mix of wit and serious analysis in your writing is refreshing—it makes the reader reflect while still being an enjoyable read.