00:12:50.700If it's been zero days since our last accident, it's been zero days since our last Nazi reference.
00:12:56.040And you won't even need to buy a lot of numbers because you're probably not going to get more than one or two days before he does it again at the rate that he's going.
00:13:06.380And what we're seeing here, though, is a very desperate liberal party.
00:13:10.860Now, look, there are always going to be some people in caucus that are a bit more outspoken, that are a bit prone to foot and mouth disorder.
00:13:17.580but what we see here is that when the liberals are as desperate as they are they go i mean they
00:13:24.340literally go nazi they that's the line that they go to with conservatives are nazis because they
00:13:30.200genuinely believe it and this is the problem we hear all the time from people like justin trudeau
00:13:35.340for example about the need to reinstill civility in politics and we need to build bridges we need
00:13:41.400to work across the aisle, all of that. And where is that attitude? Where is that desire to be
00:13:47.680conciliatory and magnanimous when you have liberal MPs that are accusing people of being Nazi
00:13:53.740propagandists because they disagree with them about the carbon tax? It is an absurd, absurd
00:13:59.300development here. Yet it's the kind of thing that they get a pass on. Now, Ken Hardy, look, he's not
00:14:06.060a senior member of the Liberal caucus by any stretch. He's not a cabinet minister, but he is,
00:14:12.260I don't think, saying anything that he doesn't truly believe. And that's the most important
00:14:16.880point here, is that we're not talking about someone who made some errant slip of the tongue
00:14:20.520in a debate. We all get heated. We all say things that maybe we wish we could take back. We're
00:14:25.100talking about someone who is being very transparent about what it is that he genuinely believes,
00:14:30.240what it is that he thinks of conservatives and you expect conservatives or I mean let me back
00:14:38.300up and say it another way do you expect people to reach across the aisle and work with folks
00:14:42.680who think they are Nazis so it's only people on the right that tend to be criticized for not being
00:14:50.120as collaborative and cooperative people say oh well Pierre Polyev he's just a name caller he
00:14:55.520doesn't have a plan. Well, he's not the one calling people a Nazi because he disagrees with
00:15:00.940them. This is, I mean, there's that old meme that's been circulating for a while. I don't
00:15:04.380know how old it is, but for a few years right now, there's a meme that's been circulating where
00:15:08.180it's basically the fake cover of a children's book. And it's, you know, everyone I don't like
00:15:12.980is Hitler or everyone I dislike is Hitler. And that's basically the liberal campaign platform
00:15:17.920in this country. It's just, if you don't like them, they are Hitler, they're Nazis, they're
00:15:22.240far right they're going to you know do xyz and historically you've had a media in this country
00:15:29.300that i think is willing to adopt this language at least in part willing to adopt the language at
00:15:35.960least in part now i wanted to turn to uh the i mean again we have to talk about the carbon tax
00:15:41.880because everyone on the internet everyone in the country seems to be talking about this because it
00:15:45.880is coming into effect the increase is coming into effect on Monday a 23% hike in the carbon tax
00:15:53.100which is adding insult to injury for Canadians who are already grappling with rising cost of
00:15:58.220living you're going to see instantly an increase in the cost of fuel and you'll also see the
00:16:02.860trickle-down increases in the cost of groceries the cost of your gas bill and all the like but
00:16:09.500one of the things that I will point out about this is that the liberals have not listened to
00:16:16.380anyone. They don't want to listen to anyone. They are purely ideological on this. Now, Justin
00:16:22.480Trudeau has been faced with mounting criticism from premiers, not just conservatives, from
00:16:27.080premiers, from provincial party leaders saying, we've got to give people some release. We just
00:16:31.880can't deal with this. He sent a letter to premiers, a letter to premiers thanking them for raising the
00:16:39.380issue of Canada's carbon pricing system. He says, our government is acutely aware of the increasing
00:16:44.660financial pressure facing Canadians. We know that they want to make life more affordable.
00:16:50.320This is what we're doing. This is why we made this revenue neutral. He claims that the Parliamentary
00:16:55.640Budget Officer has confirmed that, which is, by the way, simply untrue. The Parliamentary Budget
00:16:59.700Officer has not given any confirmation of that whatsoever. And it goes on and on. But then here
00:17:06.520is the kicker of this. He says, since Canada's carbon pricing system was first introduced in
00:17:14.0602019, we have made it clear that we are open to working with any and all provinces and territories
00:17:18.640that want to establish their own pricing systems as long as they meet or exceed the national
00:17:23.880benchmark. British Columbia, Quebec, and Northwest Territories continue to operate their own systems
00:17:29.020and are not subject to the federal backstop. When we engaged with you in 2022, all of your
00:17:36.260governments either did not propose alternative systems or proposed systems that didn't meet the
00:17:40.140minimum standards. So he's saying, well, it's your fault because you haven't come up with your own
00:17:46.280alternative, except the problem is provinces have very little latitude and autonomy because there
00:17:51.440is a federal minimum. So the only latitude provinces have is to actually come up with a
00:17:56.440higher carbon tax than what the federal government is doing. So Justin Trudeau is taking aim at
00:18:02.200provinces. He's blaming provincial governments. We can take that down now. He's blaming provincial
00:18:07.740government, unless it's already down, and I'm just seeing it on my screen as a holdover from when it
00:18:11.400was up, so don't mind me. But thank you. We can see what Justin Trudeau is doing here. He is
00:18:16.980blaming other provinces, blaming other leaders, blaming provinces for not coming up with ideas
00:18:21.820when he has literally been the reason that provinces do not have the ability to come up
00:18:27.120with their own climate plans, because the government has said you have to have this
00:18:31.160minimum standard. And I forget what the dollar value is, but it's the one that keeps going up
00:18:34.980and is increasing yet again on Monday. So it's a particular level of brazenness here and
00:18:43.020shamelessness, I'd also say, to look at provinces and premiers as the problem. They're supposed to
00:18:48.080be members of confederation that have not quite equal, kind of equal standing. They're supposed
00:18:53.300to be partners in confederation, partners in the federation of Canada. But Justin Trudeau has
00:18:58.540decided to basically kick federalism to the curb and tell the provinces it's his way or the highway
00:19:05.900and then turn around and blame them for inexplicably not being able to do something that
00:19:11.300he has not allowed them to do. And this is why we have, I think, increasingly frustrations from
00:19:18.520people that have previously gone along with it or even people who are at their core on board with
00:19:23.860the idea of a carbon tax. But Justin Trudeau has a number of positions on this that just don't seem
00:19:30.020to align with the reality. He says that this is a market-based, he basically says it's a market-based
00:19:37.160product, which I simply don't get altogether. And we also have the idea that he is claiming
00:19:44.420it's revenue neutral, which again, it is not entirely clear. And it's certainly not revenue
00:19:48.760neutral for individual Canadians who are ending up in many cases spending more on this than they're
00:19:53.740receiving, despite government's claims to the contrary. And it's perhaps why you see this issue
00:19:58.560being weaponized politically by Pierre Polyev, who's going around the country having rallies with
00:20:03.900hundreds or thousands of people, depending on where he is in the country, all rallied around
00:20:09.820this idea of spike the hike, axe the tax, whatever the rhyming scheme is he's using in any given
00:20:15.500protest. There was a great piece in the Financial Post by our friend Ross McKittrick, who is a
00:20:20.760professor of economics at the University of Guelph. Wanted, a federal leader who will be
00:20:26.160honest about climate policy. Ross McKittrick joins us once again. Ross, always good to talk
00:20:32.020to you. Thanks for coming on today. You are muted there, or maybe I'm muted. No, you're muted.
00:20:40.700Yeah, I'm not able to hear you, Ross. Hopefully we'll get that sorted out in a moment.
00:20:45.640But one of the things that I find fascinating here is that the Liberal government, and I'll just
00:20:49.960pluck from Ross's point on this in the column. He says, the conservatives would rely on the heavy
00:20:55.820hand of government through regulation and subsidies to pick winners and losers in the
00:20:59.900economy as opposed to trusting the market. And this is a complete rejection of the reality,
00:21:06.460which is that his program insists on heavy regulations. The emission reduction plan
00:21:11.800has 240 pages of regulations, subsidies, mandates, and winner picking grants. And he is saying that
00:21:20.880his product is simple. His program is simple. It's the conservative one that's going to be causing
00:21:26.680all of those problems. So this is where you see this weird sort of illusion work that's being
00:21:33.940done by the government on this. Now, sometimes you get leaders like Stephen Gilboa who are
00:21:38.560remarkably transparent about this. They just want this punitive, heavy-handed approach that targets
00:21:43.920what they believe is the great culprit of climate change. But Justin Trudeau tries to have the best
00:21:49.560of both worlds. On one hand, he tries to pretend that this is this minimally disruptive, revenue
00:21:55.840neutral thing. I mean, the line they've been committing to in the last little while is, oh,
00:21:59.160you're all better off with it. You're all making more money. You are better off with the carbon tax.
00:22:33.420picking your kids up from school is not optional going to the grocery store to buy food not
00:22:39.180optional so where are you supposed to cut back we i believe we have ross mckittrick back on the line
00:22:45.180now ross uh good to talk to you here what does it feel is really the the misdirection taking place
00:22:50.780here where the government is saying on one hand that this is not a heavy-handed regulatory process
00:22:56.060on its part? Well, the comment that I made in my op-ed was that it's one thing for Trudeau to say
00:23:04.760we believe in the economic principles of efficient climate policy, but his actual policies are
00:23:11.060anything but. Yes, he's got this elegant little carbon tax going, but the real cost of his policy
00:23:18.600are all the other regulations, the clean fuel standard, the EV mandate, the building energy
00:23:24.780efficiency codes all these other regulations massively increase the costs of his climate policy
00:23:31.340so the carbon tax itself it's costly there's no question about it but there's actually much worse
00:23:38.060stuff in his policy mix and and he was talking as if none of that is there now on the conservative
00:23:44.780side it's legitimate for them to point people to the high cost of the climate policy but
00:23:51.180But what they need to do is say, well, explain how can they be committed to things like the Paris Treaty and the net zero goals without actually planning to incur any costs of meeting them?
00:24:04.420That doesn't square up. So what I'd like is for some politicians somewhere to be honest with the public and either say, we're going to do this and it's going to cost a fortune.
00:24:17.680So just get used to it or say, okay, we've heard from the public that there's an upper limit to
00:24:24.200what they're willing to pay. This is the most we can hope to accomplish and we'll stick with that.
00:24:29.020Yeah, I think that's a valid point on all fronts because it's easy to target. And certainly for
00:24:34.020political reasons, I understand why you target the consumer carbon tax, that retail carbon tax
00:24:38.880that you see, that's a line item on your gas bill that you see buried in the price of fuel,
00:24:44.280for example but even i mean if we look at what the alberta government did under jason kenney where
00:24:49.400they said let's go after the industrial side of things that makes a very much more convoluted and
00:24:55.640as you're saying their complex process and they're still doing in effect one of the same things but
00:25:00.680it's a lot more opaque how it's happening sure yeah when uh when they don't like taking heat
00:25:05.960from consumers and they say well we'll make industry pay i think by now everybody realizes
00:25:12.200that's just a shell game it all ends up for the consumer one way or the other
00:25:16.680it's either buried in the price that you pay at the pump in the case of gas
00:25:22.280or you you pay it directly out of your own pocket but there's as economists
00:25:28.040as economics textbooks always say costs can be shifted around but they can't be avoided
00:25:33.960so what is the i i mean just from an economics perspective here let's just say that we agree
00:25:39.800with the core premise and we agree with the core goal which is debatable on how much we need to
00:25:44.840reduce emissions by what is from your perspective the path that a government should take to do that
00:25:50.120if that is its stated objective here well if it wants to meet the paris target and then go from
00:25:56.760there down to some kind of net zero target uh later in the century we would uh to get to paris
00:26:05.240I would estimate we'd need maybe a $200 ton carbon tax and then to get to net zero,
00:26:14.680something more like a $500 a ton carbon tax. I'm not sure even that would do it. And so
00:26:25.160the current policy mix that we have, even the federal liberal policy makes more,
00:26:29.080I don't think it'll get us to the Paris target and it certainly won't get us to
00:26:32.600to net zero beyond that but that's a conversation that no one's having that i mean none of the
00:26:38.840political leaders are willing to talk to people about the costs of what they're proposing to do
00:26:44.280so and that i guess gets at what i was hoping to touch on here which is that
00:26:48.840this commitment itself is boxing us in in effect like there's no way to get to that without some
00:26:55.400sort of really aggressive plan that even the conservatives who i mean again to be fair to
00:27:00.200critics of pierre paulia he has not he has committed to this he has committed to paris he
00:27:04.760has not talked about uh changing the core target right and so there's an incoherency there because
00:27:13.320uh he's justified in in saying to people look we we hear you the cost of fuel is too high
00:27:20.120cost of living is too high all these policies are are um are driving up the cost of living in
00:27:26.920unacceptable ways um but there's no magic alternative if at the same time you're going
00:27:33.400to remain committed to hitting the paris targets so um if for instance they think that you can get
00:27:40.360rid of the carbon tax and there'll be a whole bunch of far cheaper ways of doing it then
00:27:45.720they're wrong that is not the case and people have tried including past conservative governments and
00:27:52.200it just doesn't work one of the the challenges and a lot of the green energy activists i find
00:27:57.640are guilty of this where they commit to policies and that are based on technologies that don't
00:28:02.840really exist yet or don't do what they say they're going to do but i also feel that a lot of people
00:28:07.880that try to say market-based solutions are the solution are also doing the same thing because
00:28:14.600you and even mentioned at the bottom of your piece there you know yeah maybe there's a technology
00:28:18.120that will come along that will change the math on this but right now that hasn't happened um
00:28:25.080yeah so and that's exactly the point that given the current technology that we have
00:28:31.560um we're fairly limited in what we can do and um we don't know maybe a new technology will come
00:28:39.480along five years or 10 years from now the key is if you can um if you can decouple emissions from
00:28:49.560combustion basically if you can find a way to burn fossil fuels without releasing co2
00:28:54.360we've decoupled lots of other emissions from combustion we've decoupled sulfur dioxide
00:28:59.560and carbon monoxide and lots of other types of lots of other types of emissions from combustion
00:29:07.400but there's no technology that does that for co2 at least not yet as far as we know now how much of
00:29:14.360a because the government says it is looking at that as well and they say that all of these uh
00:29:20.120solutions are going to be part of the overall plan but but how much have they actually committed to
00:29:23.880r d on that or is it really just left to industry to come up with it on its own uh i think that uh
00:29:30.280um i think there is some some um uh funding for that kind of research much more in other countries
00:29:39.780i mean canada is not a big player in research in any case but um sure people are thinking about
00:29:45.840it working on it but um there's no easy answer for it so um uh because of that um you know it's
00:29:54.700right now it's kind of a lot of talk but um there's uh as far as i know there's
00:30:01.740people have been thinking about it for 50 years and there hasn't been any breakthrough on it so
00:30:05.820it's not like put a billion dollars up and someone's going to figure it out right now all
00:30:10.300we have is carbon caption storage which is very limited in its applicability we uh we lost your
00:30:17.420video there but as it happens we're coming to the end of our time anyway so if it's going to happen
00:30:20.940that's the best moment for it uh ross mckittrick from the university of guelph great piece in the
00:30:25.500financial post wanted a federal leader who will be honest about climate policy hopefully you'll
00:30:30.380get your wish there thank you very much all right thanks andrew for talking to you all right thank
00:30:34.380you that was well ross mckittrick you can even see on the screen there rm uh one thing i will say on
00:30:39.820this is that you can't i mean dilithium crystals i believe was the old star trek term you can't base
00:30:45.580your policy on things that don't exist yet and a lot of people have all of these great ambitions
00:30:50.460about, oh, solar will do this and wind will do this, and they just don't. And the really efficient
00:30:55.920and effective and clean sources of energy that we do have, like, for example, nuclear, they never
00:31:02.900seem to want to talk about. So with that, we'll, I'm sure, revisit this as we get closer to the
00:31:08.680weekend, and then big protests are going to be on Monday. And I think we just learned this morning,
00:31:14.980Pierre Polyev, he'll be doing his own rally in Nanaimo, but there are protests in Lloyd Minster
00:31:19.820outside Alberta, Ottawa, Toronto, all over the place.
00:31:42.780or the way they thought it was supposed to.
00:31:45.040Whether it is cases of people being treated in hallways,
00:31:48.880people who have been on waiting lists for months and months and months to see a specialist not to
00:31:53.440mention to you know actually be treated by that specialist so we all defend the ideal of the
00:31:59.540healthcare system in Canada but not the application of it so how do we get to that ideal or is it that
00:32:05.740our core expectation is flawed well one of the things that's quite interesting and I'm actually
00:32:10.900surprised to see this is that most Canadians would be open to and welcome major changes to
00:32:16.920the health care system. There was a Leger survey of 2,000 Canadian adults, that's quite a large
00:32:22.240sample size for a poll of this nature, that found health care ranks among the top three priorities
00:32:26.820for politicians, and that two-thirds of those respondents said they wanted significant changes
00:32:33.700to the system. Now, these obviously have, in some cases, come up against challenges in the courts.
00:32:40.720Most recently, the Canby Surgical case in British Columbia, which I'm sure we can talk about in this
00:32:46.240context, but let's just talk about what Canadians want here and what's standing in the way. Joining
00:32:50.800me is a counsel for the Canadian Constitution Foundation, Josh DeHaz. Josh, good to have you
00:32:55.820back on the show. This is a little bit encouraging. I must say it was a pleasant surprise to see this
00:33:00.600because so often this is treated as just this third rail political issue that you're not allowed
00:33:04.960to do anything with. Yeah, absolutely. So in one sense, it's really bad news because Canadians see
00:33:11.580healthcare system that's in crisis but what i did find encouraging is the fact that canadians are
00:33:17.980saying they're ready for major change so like you said two-thirds say they want major change
00:33:23.340and only five percent of people actually say that they want to do the thing that uh you most often
00:33:30.620hear in the media which is you know just throw more public funding at this problem right so
00:33:35.980uh people are are presented with those options more public just more public funding or some
00:33:40.620major change and everyone is basically saying we want major change and uh one really interesting
00:33:47.100part of this too was it was kind of kind of counterintuitive to us at the ccf but
00:33:51.980women in particular are saying that they are worried about the healthcare system and want
00:33:56.700major change 72 percent of women surveyed said that they think the healthcare system is going
00:34:02.860to be worse for future generations if we don't get those major changes and that was a lot higher than
00:34:08.380men and we're trying to figure out why that was but uh we we think the reason might be that women
00:34:13.900just make a lot more of the health care decisions they do a lot more of the sort of caregiving and
00:34:19.020so that might explain uh why they're more worried about it simply because they you know interact
00:34:25.260with the system a lot more you have in this country a relatively small group of activists
00:34:31.420that care very much about the structure of the system like canadian doctors for medicare for
00:34:35.740example but most canadians i feel care more about outcomes and you look at some of the priorities
00:34:41.340that were listed here uh 46 say they want more family doctors as a top priority uh shorter
00:34:48.060emergency room wait times was behind that shorter times for common surgeries and other treatments
00:34:53.180those have nothing to do with who delivers it with how they access it those are just outcomes those
00:34:58.140are things that people want and and i believe that if you were to put forward a system that says
00:35:02.540listen you're not going to go bankrupt looking for health care that's not what we're pushing here
00:35:06.620but you will get a better quicker product canadians would be on board with that but
00:35:12.380but you have again this very small group that stands in the way of that yeah you're completely
00:35:17.820right uh one thing a lot of people i don't think realize is that you know a lot of the opposition
00:35:22.860to any sort of reform or change in the canadian health care system a lot of that's sort of funded
00:35:27.740by sort of special interest groups like, you know, health care unions. And what the message
00:35:33.000that a lot of Canadians are not hearing is that, you know, Canada is just one country in the world.
00:35:38.400And we've chosen to have a very strict restrictions on private payment for health care. But, you know,
00:35:46.620if you look at all of Europe, they have universal health care. You don't have to pay with your
00:35:50.560credit card if you need health care, if you're poor, if you're middle class, if you want to
00:35:54.980access the public system. And most people are getting their health care through the public
00:35:58.820system. But they also have this sort of release valve, which is that they have a private system
00:36:03.780where if things aren't working, some wealthier people can go and they can pay to get health
00:36:08.620care. And that takes pressure off the public system. And the sort of the proof is in the
00:36:12.940pudding. You know, if you look at all the rankings that look at outcomes and wait times and even
00:36:18.060equity, all of the European countries are basically doing better than Canada. So I think we really
00:36:23.600need to start, you know, pushing back against that, that sacred cow that we can't allow any
00:36:29.740sort of private payment in Canada. Just to bring the legal context here, I know the CCF
00:36:35.580had taken up the long, long running Canby case in British Columbia there, which I spoke about,
00:36:42.020I think it was with, I can't remember if it was with Joanna Barron or Christine Van Gein or both,
00:36:45.840but when the decision came up, but as a bit of a primer there, how does that decision stand in the
00:36:51.400way of what you and I are talking about and Canadians seem to want here?
00:36:56.120Well, so British Columbia, like most provinces, has some restrictions on, you know, doctors
00:37:03.160work on offering private surgeries or doctors or health insurance.
00:37:08.600And each province is a little bit different.
00:37:10.560But the idea is that Canadians supposedly want a government monopoly on health care.
00:37:16.700And so we've got all of these restrictions.
00:37:18.740And in that particular case, we said, you know, if you're waiting on a waiting list for a surgery and you're in physical pain and you could pay to relieve that.
00:37:29.000But it's just a law standing in the way, you know, an arbitrary law that is supposed to guarantee you reasonable access to health care, but is actually forcing you to wait on a wait list.
00:37:40.060That's violating your constitutional rights and that shouldn't be allowed to stand.
00:37:43.940And, you know, there's a 2005 case that found that to be the case in Quebec, but it doesn't apply in the rest of Canada.
00:37:51.700So we thought that in British Columbia we would be successful.
00:37:55.100But the courts there said, no, this is a reasonable limit on people's charter rights, even though people suffer and in some cases die on waiting lists.
00:38:04.820And so right now it's still apparently acceptable to do this in British Columbia.
00:38:11.140And we don't really know what the status is in the rest of the provinces.
00:38:15.540So, you know, we're always sort of looking for our next can be case.
00:38:37.540know, in fact, the public system is better off because one more person has come off that wait
00:38:41.740list, which helps the person behind them. So I really don't get how you like, it's such an
00:38:48.220inexplicable decision, just not even looking at the law, just on the logic of it. Yeah, that's
00:38:54.380right. Yeah. So, so I also don't understand that, like you can look at, for example, look at Norway
00:39:00.660And it's the country that ranks better than any other country in the OECD for its health care
00:39:08.340outcomes, for its health care equity. And it does better on cost than Canada. Canada has a very,
00:39:13.800very expensive system. And they have only about 10% of people there have private insurance and
00:39:19.980they get some specialist appointments quicker. They do get some surgeries quicker, but it's
00:39:26.580optional and 90% of people are happy with the public system and stay in that system. But just
00:39:32.360taking that, you know, half million Norwegians out of the public system makes the waiting lists in
00:39:37.900the public system shorter for everyone. And, you know, Norway can actually do a lot more in their
00:39:42.720public system because they're not, because they don't have to look after 100% of the population
00:39:48.460all the time. An interesting sort of result from this survey that we did with Second Street and
00:39:55.280uh mei was that canadians actually rank pharma care extremely low their priority it's it's like
00:40:02.400ninth out of nine options only three percent set as their top priority and that's because canada
00:40:08.020can't seem to figure out the basics like getting you your family doctor or uh reasonable er wait
00:40:14.580times uh norway or they they can afford to actually do pharma care uh because they also
00:40:21.820allow some sort of private money into the system so i think it's pretty clear at this point that
00:40:27.420uh canada's system isn't working that it's you know violating canadians constitutional rights
00:40:32.140and the survey that we've we've just done seems to show that the public is kind of had ahead of the
00:40:38.220the media and some of the sort of politicians on this particular topic because canadians are ready
00:40:43.580for change one thing i mean maybe i i'm i'm a bit of adult so it's probably easier for you than for
00:40:49.100me here but it's navigating this issue of what is legal and what is just tradition has been
00:40:55.180incredibly difficult i mean ontario is a great example of this where you've got a couple of
00:40:59.500literally private hospitals that are there because they've just been grandfathered in
00:41:03.740you have federal regulations but health care is provincial and and i think a lot of that
00:41:08.540jurisdictional uh ambiguity is used by politicians that don't want to touch this issue provincial
00:41:14.380leaders will say oh well the federal government handcuffs us on universal health care the federal
00:41:18.540government will say, oh, well, health care is a provincial issue. So at its core, if we wanted to
00:41:23.700have some progress on this issue, where's the starting point? Where's the way into that? Is
00:41:29.200it at federal level with the core Canada Health Act or is it provincial? Yeah, I think it's
00:41:34.540actually both. So the Canada Health Act is not as clear as people think it is. So just for a little
00:41:40.260bit of background. I'm glad I'm not alone in being utterly confused when I look at it. I was reading
00:41:45.400about uh certain aspects of it last night and it's it's confusing so the basic idea behind the
00:41:51.000canada health act is that the federal government is going to give provinces money to spend on
00:41:56.600health care even though health care is a provincial jurisdiction right so uh but to do so canada in
00:42:03.560exchange for that money wants certain guarantees from the provinces for example that you know
00:42:10.520people are not going to be charged user fees or things like that. But there's so much ambiguity
00:42:16.260in it. One really good example is diagnostic services. So, you know, getting an MRI. Most
00:42:24.500of Canada, you can walk into a private clinic, put down your credit card and get off the public
00:42:30.800wait list if you want to by paying for that MRI. Well, one of the places you can't do that is
00:42:36.780ontario unfortunately so you know we're stuck going to gatuneau or to buffalo if we are are
00:42:43.340worried about uh being stuck on a wait list so oh yeah so i live just on that i live an hour from
00:42:48.700port here on michigan you cross the border and billboards advertising to canadians you know get
00:42:53.260your mri you know 129 or whatever you know go here open 24 7. yeah we we have them i'm in toronto and
00:43:00.860we have them on the subway saying you know go to buffalo for all your surgeries or services but
00:43:05.020But anyway, the point is that the federal government and the provinces don't even seem to know whether that is supposed to be covered under the Canada Health Act.
00:43:13.440And the Trudeau government in 2018 said suddenly, actually, you know, this should be something that provinces are required to not only pay for, but stop anyone from buying privately.
00:43:25.660And so in our opinion, this is contrary to the Canada Health Act, and they started fining provinces like Quebec and Alberta and British Columbia just for allowing people to get out of the public waitlist line, go to a private clinic and pay to have the health care that they need.
00:43:44.700And I think you could clarify the Canada Health Act.
00:43:48.540You know, I think it allows provinces to do a lot more than they say that it does.
00:43:53.020But there's no reason why the federal government couldn't clarify the Canada Health Act and say, look, we're still going to fund universal health care.
00:44:01.180We're still going to give you just as much money, but we're going to let provinces innovate to some degree because the status quo just isn't working.
00:44:08.540So, you know, if I was in charge, I'd probably start with just clarifying that Canada Health Act.
00:44:15.840And obviously, with polling, I mean, the cynic in all of us says politicians are responsive to polls more than their core convictions sometimes.
00:44:23.620So if that's the case, your move, political class.
00:44:26.680You can read more about this at theccf.ca.
00:44:30.100Josh Dehas, always good to talk to you.