It's Like Making Sausages

At work today, Gordon and I were talking about the pro-sports/MRI/two-tier health care issue. Now, I'm as much against two-tier health care as anyone should be, but it really sounds like bad policy.

Here's the problem: McGuinty promised to prevent two-tiered health care (basically, health care where people with lots of money can pay to get better service). Currently, athletes who are part of some pro-sports team have an arrangement where they can pay lots of money to get quick MRI scans. Sounds like two-tier health care, right? Well, add in the fact that their arrangements have them getting MRIs outside of the normal operating hours of the MRI labs -- they aren't therefore getting something at the expense of someone else. And they can get these MRIs anywhere, 'cause athletes travel a lot. They think it's a Good Thing to spend their money on our MRI labs. Finally, because of residency requirements, these guys aren't entitled to Ontario health care (OHIP).

Gordon was really pissed off at McGuinty. He said that it was clear that McGuinty was taking a stand that would look popular based on the most superficial details of the case.

And I think he's right. I mentioned, in response, some material I was reading in the Ontario legislature's official Hansard. Recently I noticed that more of the historical Hansard is available online and one can, for example, go back and read proceedings from Rae's government. I was particularly interested in the second reading of Bill C167, Ontario's first major attempt to change the legal definition of marriage. It was defeated at second reading (and our current premier voted against it).

I was particularly interested in the speech of Mr. Carman McClelland, a Liberal MPP who voted yae at first reading and nay at second reading. McClelland bucked his party's stance when he voted yae, a politically unwise thing to do. He felt that the issue needed to be debated in parliament. At second reading, he said:

One of my colleagues, it matters not which party he or she represents, indicated to me that we weren't paid enough money to go back to the constituents and explain the process. I had an editorial in my local paper say that maybe they understood why I did what I did, but politics was already too confusing and it was ill-advised of me to do something that might confuse people in terms of the process.

[...]

If politics is somewhat confusing, as some of my friends wrote in the editorial in my community paper, well, so be it. I suppose it is confusing. It's confusing for many of us who are here. But I believed on May 19 that in order for this issue, not to be resolved, because it is not resolved regardless of how the vote goes this afternoon, but for this issue to be dealt with, we needed to engage in this debate in this place. There has been, in point of fact, the debate that has taken place in the broader community. It has been, from time to time, taking place by picking out a line or a paragraph from a letter here or a paragraph from a letter there, or a phrase from a speech given in some place by some member and extrapolated to represent a whole point of view, to perhaps say that somebody doesn't support or does support a particular point of view.

I watched that speech when it was first aired. A lot of what he said, I didn't agree with. But I think this is an interesting an sobering statement on modern politics.