Juno News - Trudeau pushes misinformation about Canada’s health care system

00:00:00.000 Canada's healthcare system is broken, but rather than trying to fix it, the Liberals are pushing

00:00:04.840 a superficial debate based on semantics, fear-mongering, and a three-decades-old

00:00:09.980 partisan attack. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:00:17.840 The Liberals have been running a shockingly bad campaign. Almost two weeks in, and we have seen

00:00:23.300 nothing but spectacular gaffe after spectacular gaffe. First, true to flip-flop on recognizing

00:00:29.040 the Taliban as a legitimate government of Afghanistan, and then, to make matters so much 0.54

00:00:34.460 worse, his pathetic minister for the status of women called the Taliban our brothers. Unbelievable.

00:00:41.940 And as the country is reeling with sky-high inflation and unfathomable debt levels, Trudeau just sort of

00:00:47.920 casually admits that he doesn't really think much about the government's money policy. Well, this

00:00:53.500 week, the Trudeau government had the opportunity to get his campaign back on track, but instead,

00:00:58.260 Trudeau's Deputy Prime Minister and the country's Finance Minister, Christia Freeland, released a

00:01:04.180 patently misleading video alleging that Conservative leader Erin O'Toole wants to privatize Canada's

00:01:10.320 Medicare system. It was so misleading that the social media giant Twitter slapped a label on the video

00:01:16.320 warning viewers that the content had been manipulated and was therefore false and misleading.

00:01:21.220 I've mentioned it on the show before, but it bears repeating. This is peak liberal hypocrisy and,

00:01:28.180 I'll have to say, top-notch irony. The liberals have spent years warning us about the dangers of

00:01:34.420 fake news online and the need for the government to go in and crack down on it. They've introduced

00:01:39.680 legislation pushing for more censorship of what you can see and what you can share online. They want more

00:01:45.220 power and more control over the internet, and they want Canadians to believe them and to trust them,

00:01:50.900 to say that they are more trustworthy with this power than the Silicon Valley tech censors. So it was all

00:01:57.060 just too perfect that it was the liberals themselves, it was Trudeau and Freeland, who were caught red-handed

00:02:02.980 pushing fake news, pushing falsehoods and misinformation, and that they were punished for this during the

00:02:09.220 campaign. That one will come back to haunt them should they ever form government again and try to push their

00:02:15.060 censorship agenda again. But rather than acknowledge that they went over their skis on this one, they've been

00:02:20.860 instead decided to double down and continue to push the storyline behind this disingenuous video.

00:02:26.860 These guys have no sense of self-awareness and no sense of decency. So instead, this is what we see this week.

00:02:32.940 And so it really, really matters. And it matters for the future. We put out, I think we put this out

00:02:42.860 already. If not, you guys are going to get the scoop on the rest of the country. But we tweeted out some

00:02:48.940 video of Aaron O'Toole during the conservative leadership campaign, where he talks about privatizing

00:02:56.940 Medicare. Can you believe that?

00:02:58.940 No, Christia Freeland, O'Toole did not talk about privatizing Medicare. That's not what he said, and that's not his

00:03:04.940 position. In the clip that Freeland shared, the one that got slapped with the manipulated media tag on Twitter, O'Toole

00:03:10.940 talked about utilizing more private delivery options of healthcare within the public universal system. There is a

00:03:17.940 difference, a huge difference. But rather than having a thoughtful and nuanced debate about healthcare, where

00:03:23.940 we look at our system and we try to figure out how we can improve upon it, how we as Canadians can have the

00:03:28.940 best delivery and the best healthcare possible, these liberal politicians are instead determined to take

00:03:35.940 the conservative position out of context, to manipulate the truth, to spin it into partisan talking points, and

00:03:41.940 to use those talking points to bludgeon conservatives over the head while fear-mongering Canadians.

00:03:46.940 So right on cue, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau dumbs down this message even more and releases this

00:03:53.940 astonishingly stupid video.

00:03:56.940 So after days of avoiding it, Aaron O'Toole confirmed he wants to bring private, for-profit healthcare to

00:04:02.940 Canada. He said he supports choice in healthcare, which means letting the wealthiest pay to jump ahead in line.

00:04:09.940 We believe in strengthening universal public healthcare for everyone. That's why we're investing in more

00:04:15.940 doctors and nurses, shorter wait times, and better healthcare. Conservative cuts would take us

00:04:21.940 backwards. Let's keep moving forward for everyone.

00:04:25.940 Now I want to spend some time on the podcast breaking this down, explaining how superficial and

00:04:29.940 how bad it is. And I know it's obvious to anyone who watches it just how bad and superficial it is, but I

00:04:35.940 think it's worth spending time to go through line by line. Because I think Canadians deserve better than this 1.00

00:04:41.940 trite and partisan debate on healthcare. And almost everything that Justin Trudeau says in this video is

00:04:47.940 either wrong, it's missing context, or it's just plain bizarre in terms of its messaging and strategy. And I will apologize

00:04:55.940 in advance because I know the audience and I know that this is a little more Trudeau than most Canadians can

00:05:01.940 handle, but we're going to do it anyway. So here we go. So first he starts off by saying this.

00:05:05.940 So after days of avoiding it, what do you mean avoiding it? The very first five words out of Justin Trudeau's

00:05:11.940 mouth are just not true. So let's just go to the timeline very quickly. Chrystia Freeland released her 0.99

00:05:17.940 misleading video on Sunday. And by Monday, Twitter had slapped that warning label on it. Now Trudeau recorded

00:05:23.940 this little selfie video on Tuesday. So it wasn't days of O'Toole avoiding it. And besides, O'Toole didn't

00:05:29.940 avoid it. He was asked quickly about his position by the media and he answered it. He answered it in the same way

00:05:35.940 he had in the past and the same way as it appeared in the conservative platform. So no O'Toole

00:05:39.940 wasn't avoiding it. And no, it's not like he changed his position. Now next Trudeau contends this.

00:05:47.940 Aaron O'Toole confirmed he wants to bring private for-profit healthcare to Canada.

00:05:52.940 Now, first, I do find it a little amusing that Trudeau uses words like private and for-profit as if

00:05:58.940 they're taboo. I have a news flash to Trudeau. We live in a market economy here in Canada. Basically

00:06:04.940 everything that we buy, everything that we have, all those services are based on private and for-profit

00:06:11.940 service. That's how markets work. That's how you get everything from food to housing to clothing. Even

00:06:16.940 schools have private options. So it's so weird just on the surface that we scaremonger around terms like

00:06:22.940 private and for-profit. And I have another news flash for Justin Trudeau. And that is that the majority of

00:06:28.940 healthcare services in Canada, in this country, are already private and for-profit. That's right.

00:06:34.940 We already do private care. We already do for-profit care in Canada. That now makes up the majority of our

00:06:39.940 healthcare system. I'm going to read from Sean Spear's recent piece in The Hub. It's really good. If you don't

00:06:44.940 know about The Hub, you should go check it out. Sean Spear is very, very good at this sort of policy

00:06:49.940 breakdown. So this is what he has to say about healthcare. And again, he's talking about this controversy.

00:06:54.940 So he says, O'Toole was quickly asked about it by journalists and he reiterated his position,

00:06:59.940 which remains that he wants to partner with private sector delivery companies to improve

00:07:04.260 the universal public system. Canada's Medicare model of compulsory single-payer insurance is

00:07:09.780 already a hybrid model. Single-payer insurance only covers medically necessary services that are

00:07:15.260 narrowly defined as those provided by a physician or in a hospital. It doesn't extend to other parts of

00:07:20.740 Canadians' healthcare, including prescription drugs, long-term care, or home services. For those

00:07:25.780 non-insured services, we have a combination of public subsidies, employer-provided insurance,

00:07:30.700 or out-of-pocket spending. What portion of overall healthcare is covered by single-payer insurance?

00:07:36.000 Less than half. The parts of the healthcare system not subject to Medicare now represent 55% of all

00:07:42.440 healthcare spending in Canada. So yeah, the weird notion that Canada has this pure 100% public system

00:07:48.940 isn't true. It just doesn't. We don't have that. We have a hybrid model that is weirdly restrictive

00:07:54.200 when it comes to mixing. So we can't have private money or private delivery in the narrowly defined

00:07:58.920 public areas, and there's insufficient public support for everything else. Except, of course,

00:08:04.140 it's not even the case because we're seeing increasing private alternatives, places like the

00:08:08.240 Canby Clinic in Vancouver that offer private competition, as well as private clinics popping up

00:08:13.020 all over Quebec because of a 2005 Supreme Court case called the Chewy case, which ruled in favor of

00:08:19.100 private delivery. That's a topic for another day, but still, it shows how misleading Trudeau is being,

00:08:24.140 or perhaps how ignorant he is of Canada's healthcare system, and how he sort of goes back to these very

00:08:29.020 basic, very banal talking points when he's talking about healthcare platitudes, really, not even talking

00:08:35.580 points. Anyway, so first he evoked fear over generally uncontroversial words like private and

00:08:41.280 pro-profit, and then he goes even worse and goes even deeper down this rabbit hole. Let's play the

00:08:45.960 next part here. This is really something. He said he supports choice in healthcare, which means letting

00:08:51.260 the wealthiest pay to jump ahead in line. So now we're trying to hear a liberal politician fearmonger

00:08:57.900 over the word choice. Are we supposed to believe that choice is a bad thing, that we don't want to have

00:09:03.780 choice in our healthcare? Again, Trudeau, free people like choice. In fact, when it comes to the liberals'

00:09:09.440 own position on abortion, they lean heavily on the euphemism pro-choice. So why are they all of a sudden

00:09:14.880 anti-choice when it comes to the broader healthcare issue and the broader healthcare system in Canada? I

00:09:20.200 really don't understand this language here. And also this line about the wealthiest would pay to get

00:09:26.080 ahead. Well, that's not even true, because if you're talking about a private alternative, it's not the same

00:09:31.780 queue. It's a separate queue. They're going into a totally different line, which makes the original line

00:09:37.060 shorter. So think about it. Imagine just for instance that you're in Soviet Russia and you want

00:09:42.540 to buy a loaf of bread. You have to wait two hours in line for that bread. Say there's a hundred people

00:09:47.220 in front of you. But then someone comes along and says, hey, I have the same bread, but I'm going to

00:09:52.740 charge you twice as much for the bread. And so all of a sudden you have a separate option. Say 25 people

00:09:59.400 decide to go and pay double to get their bread faster. And you decide that you don't want to leave.

00:10:05.320 You don't want to pay more. You're going to stay in the original line. Well, when the 25 people leave,

00:10:09.900 your line just got 25% shorter. So in this example, instead of waiting two hours, you would now wait

00:10:15.300 an hour and a half. So the people who wanted to pay more for bread got their bread faster. They had

00:10:20.480 to pay more. The people who didn't had to wait less. So it really is a win-win situation. That's what

00:10:26.260 we're talking about here. Even Canadians who don't want to have to pay out of pocket or don't want to

00:10:30.180 have to pay more should still welcome the idea that other people who want to pay more

00:10:34.660 can leave the public queues and make those shorter. It's worth noting. This is already the case in

00:10:39.700 Saskatchewan with their new program that allows providers to charge Canadians who want to get an

00:10:44.260 MRI faster. But again, Trudeau is just simply not being honest. Next, he says this.

00:10:49.760 We believe in strengthening universal public health care for everyone. That's why we're investing in

00:10:55.660 more doctors and nurses, shorter wait times, and better health care. And now again, sure,

00:11:01.220 liberals may believe in strengthening public universal health care, but that's also Aaron

00:11:05.220 O'Toole's position. I'll read you a little bit from the Conservative platform because this is really

00:11:09.120 the same thing that he's talking about. So first, he says he wants to partner with private sector

00:11:13.360 rather than over-rely on the government. We know there are some things best done by the private

00:11:18.280 sector and it'll be faster to reach out for help. He also says that Canada's Conservatives will meet

00:11:23.420 with the premiers within the first 100 days of forming a government to propose a new health

00:11:27.900 agreement with the provinces and territories that boosts the annual growth rate of the Canada health

00:11:32.780 transfer to at least 6%. This will inject nearly $60 billion into our health care system over the

00:11:39.160 next 10 years. It's worth noting that that is the largest ticket item in the Conservative platform.

00:11:43.560 So the biggest thing that they want to spend money on is increasing the amount of health care,

00:11:48.180 public health care, that goes to the provinces. And so what they're calling for is an increase

00:11:53.120 over what the Liberals are calling for. So the Conservatives are actually calling for more money

00:11:57.060 to go into the public health care system. Next, O'Toole says that he will create a pilot program

00:12:02.180 to provide $150 million over three years in grants to non-profits and charities delivering mental health

00:12:07.420 and well-being programs. So again, back to what Sean Spear was talking about, O'Toole wants to broaden

00:12:12.920 what is considered public health care. So bring in more things that right now are privately delivered

00:12:18.940 and allow more money to go from the public side. So in some ways, what O'Toole is calling for is

00:12:24.140 broader, more comprehensive public health care than what Trudeau says. But again, Trudeau just isn't being

00:12:30.140 honest, which is why it's even more absurd that Trudeau says this.

00:12:34.800 Conservative cuts would take us backwards. Let's keep moving forward for everyone.

00:12:40.320 So again, there are no cuts. O'Toole is talking about increasing public money in universal health care,

00:12:45.460 as well as increasing private investment. So there's more money on two fronts, and yet somehow

00:12:50.800 the Liberals still call it cuts with a straight face. Only a Liberal could circle that square.

00:12:56.320 And this is the problem. Trudeau's video smacked of desperation. You can see how desperate he is in

00:13:01.220 that video. He's panicking, and that's why he's resorting to these half-truths and this partisan spin.

00:13:06.200 But it's also remarkably out of touch and dated. I couldn't help but thinking about how it's 2021,

00:13:12.160 and Trudeau and the Liberals are resorting and relying on the exact same line of attack that

00:13:17.080 they've been using for over 20 years. It's like a throwback to the 2000 election campaign.

00:13:23.100 So back in that 2000 election campaign, Liberal leader Jean-Claude Chen released a misleading attack

00:13:28.500 ad against Canadian alliance leader Stockwell Day, alleging that Day would bring in private

00:13:33.420 two-tier health care. Day was so desperate to refute that mischaracterization that he held up a sign

00:13:39.260 during the debate, insisting that it wasn't true. But really, Craig, why people are concerned

00:13:43.800 about the Canadian health care system and the Canadian alliance position, something very serious

00:13:49.760 has happened here. I have said consistently, and our policy is very clear, and I'll say it again,

00:13:54.540 and the whole country has seen our briefing notes. You may as well look at them too.

00:13:57.380 No two-tier health care. Now, I've said that very clearly.

00:14:00.200 So back 21 years ago, that seemed to work for the Liberals, and the Liberals formed a government

00:14:04.800 after that election. But again, that was 21 years ago, and it's almost like the Liberals are stuck

00:14:10.000 in a time warp. Canadians know that our health care system is failing. We know that there are

00:14:15.400 ridiculous cues and intense rationing happening in our health care. We know that going into a hospital

00:14:20.520 and seeing a doctor is a slow and painful experience, especially if you're living with

00:14:25.260 chronic pain or chronic illness, or if you're going in for a routine procedure, or even if you're going

00:14:30.460 in for a checkup, for instance, during pregnancy. I know women who literally don't know the doctor

00:14:36.160 who delivered their baby because it was such a rush. The doctor was in and out so quickly,

00:14:41.080 they don't even know who it was, and that's especially the case in the big cities. Can you

00:14:45.340 imagine? That's not the kind of care that Canadians deserve. And we also know that COVID has stretched

00:14:50.700 your health care system to its limits, and that even compared to other rich and developed countries,

00:14:55.820 Canada routinely ranks at or near the bottom of those ranking lists. And Canadians know that we

00:15:01.860 already pay out of pocket, and that there already is private and for-profit health care here in Canada.

00:15:07.080 We see private clinics all over cities like Montreal and Vancouver, and we know, for instance,

00:15:11.460 that you can now get that MRI in Saskatchewan by paying. We also know that we pay out of pocket for

00:15:16.440 most of our health care services, including dental, physio, optometry, long-term care,

00:15:21.120 and prescription drugs. Those are all already private. So seeing Trudeau dumb down the message

00:15:26.520 and making these absurd statements and pushing this partisan spin, well, it just doesn't come

00:15:31.580 across very well. It comes across as desperate, condescending, misleading, and just plain wrong.

00:15:37.600 The liberals are stuck in the past, and that's especially the case when it comes to health care.

00:15:41.760 And it's becoming more and more obvious that we just really need a change here in Canada.

00:15:45.960 I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:15:51.120 The Candace Malcolm Show.

Juno News - August 26, 2021

Trudeau pushes misinformation about Canada’s health care system

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