Bold move or big mistake? Naheed Nenshi implores Ottawa to step in and force Alberta to drop surgery line-jumping scheme

Let’s remind that, contrasting with currently common misuse of the term, “political” is not the same things as partisanship.

Naturally politics is how public policy gets done (there are other kinds of politics—“family politics,” “workplace politics,” &c, not necessarily to do with public policy). Too often we hear people–usually politicians criticizing rival politicians—complaining that so-and-so representative or such-and-such party is making an issue “political” or accusing with a tone of disgust that, “That [name] party is trying to politicize this [name] issue!” —by which they properly mean “partisan” or the more clumsy “making this issue too partisan,”—that is, pushing policy which unfairly favours one party over others, or which dismisses other parties’ inputs, criticisms or protests out-of-hand, or which repeals a former-governing party’s legislation purely for partisan reasons as both UCP leaders swore to do to any and all of Alberta’s single-term NDP government simply as a matter of partisan course.

Identifying Danielle Smith and the UCP as extreme partisans, or chauvinists, is an understatement of ridiculous proportion, but as such they provide further illustration by way of pipeline policy which is so chauvinistically dismissive of the federally-owned TMX pipeline to the West Coast that they don’t recognize its existence at all in order to argue that Ottawa is unfairly stifling Alberta’s bitumen industry, an illustration with a bonus example that “Ottawa” is TBA-code for “Trudeau” (père ou fils), thence “francophone” (“Quebec,” bilingual labelling, &c), thence “Liberal” (or “woke,” &c), thence “Canada” (“sheeple,” &c)—proof that chauvinism, despite its primitiveness, is capable of evolving.

There is of course a political aspect of pipeline policy or policy proposal which fairly involves debate whether pipelines are a good idea or if there might be a better, or more economical way or better route or more propitious time to do it, but the radicalized UCP position is totally partisan—indeed, chauvinistic—for the obvious reason that it’s a public policy that’s already done.

Ignoring TMX so assiduously is the same kind of intransigent denialism as anti-vaxxerism which, with respect Covid, was more than nonpolitical, but actually anti-political: implementing epidemiological response was definitely fraught with political problems—that is, the problems of persuasion, facilitating, enforcing, &c—, but the policy itself of responding to life-threatening epidemics is so straightforward as to hardly need explanation.

That’s how Nenshi uses the term “political”—not to mean “too partisan” but rather to say that it’s unnecessary to do politics—or “thread the needle”—with respect the Canada Health Act because it’s public policy for which the requisite politics is already done, it already exists. Rather, Nenshi points out, implementing the already-done-policy is an administrative question, not a political one. And since the policy is a federal one with which the provinces agreed to the terms of implementation, it falls to the federal government administration to make sure it is implemented as designed and agreed.

At one time universal public healthcare was public policy only in Saskatchewan, one of whose federal MPs, Progressive Conservative leader John Diefenbaker, during his final terms as Prime Minister, commissioned the white paper that recommended extending the public system to the rest of Canada; after WWII, Saskatchewan CCF Premier Tommy Douglas first implemented the policy in his own province; then, in the early 60s, as leader of the federal NDP which held the balance of power during the Liberal minority which replaced Diefenbaker’s government, agreed to confidence and supply in return for PM Lester Pearson’s implementation of a national public healthcare policy. The policy got done, without doubt politically done, but, by way of Conservative, Socialist, and Liberal cooperation, with a notable lack of partisan contention.

Federal politics is more complicated than provincial and, for whatever reason PM Carney might be reticent to wade into the Alberta healthcare issue, there are probably reasons that can be rightly called political—that is, other policy objectives might affect or be affected by whatever response he might make about the administration of healthcare in a province. Carney plays a lot of ‘inside ball’—particularly with respect the pipeline MoU with the reliably petulant Smith government, but Nenshi is well within political bounds in making his plea that the feds respond to the UCP’s apparent abrogation of the Canada Health Act.

Naturally Nenshi might have partisan calculation in mind but it would be difficult to prove his request isn’t simply about encouraging the feds to take administrative responsibility for federal policy to which provinces are signatory. And doubtless he has psephological calculation as well, again difficult to discern through his common sense position.

We should all try to avoid using the terms “politics,” “politicization,” “politician,” and “politicization” as pejorative substitutes for “partisanship” or its extreme, chauvinism. Politics is absolutely needed to get public policy done. Chauvinism, on the other hand, is handmaiden to charlatanism which ultimately cannot produce good public policy by any means.