Roundup: Considerations on the private delivery debate

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The accusations and sanctimony from that video continued to reverberate around the campaign yesterday, with the Liberals defending the video and its edits, while the Conservatives wrote to the Commissioner of Elections to have it taken down, and really, we’re all the dumber for it.

It did keep the debate on healthcare going throughout the day, and while I do have a column on this coming out later today, I’ll make a few additional observations, which is that there are nuances to the debate around private delivery, and one of them is how stringently the federal government enforces the Canada Health Act when it comes to that enforcement. There are concerns that the Conservatives’ pledge to increase health transfers with no strings attached is a signal that they are willing to allow more private delivery, whereas the Liberals are starting to resume clawbacks of health transfers in proportion to fees collected from private delivery, as they paused those clawbacks during the pandemic so as to give provinces as many resources as possible (though one could argue that the federal government could have played harder ball). An example is Clinic 554 in New Brunswick, which is a private abortion clinic as the province won’t pay for its services, citing that the province is already sufficiently covered with the three hospitals that provide the service (which is disputed as the Clinic is in Fredericton, where the service is not provided publicly). The federal government was clawing back health transfers related to fees that people paid to the clinic, but stopped when the pandemic hit. It looks like this is going to start in Saskatchewan and Manitoba with private delivery of services in those provinces.

On the campaign trail:

  • Justin Trudeau was in Halifax to promise money for healthcare – and some specific promises that would require provinces to agree to strings (good luck with that).
  • Erin O’Toole was in Ottawa and made promises around giving workers more voice in how companies operate, trotting out tripartism as federal policy.
  • Jagmeet Singh was in Montreal to denounce the current government not getting the job done on climate, but offering few details of how he would do better.
  • The Star counts four false claims from Annamie Paul in her first campaign week.
  • Twitter explains how they come to the determination of what videos they consider “manipulated media.”
  • Here is a look at how the different parties propose to prepare for future pandemics.
  • The Line tallies some of the bullshit from the first week of the campaign.
  • Susan Delacourt wonders why Chrystia Freeland didn’t refuse to post that edited video over Twitter under her name, citing that she should have known better.
  • Paul Wells engages in some post-election game theory as to possible configurations of the House of Commons and a possible change of government.

Good reads:

  • We are told that Canadian special forces are operating outside of the Kabul airport to retrieve translators and their families to get them to safety.
  • A recently declassified Canadian intelligence report shows that far-right extremists are actively recruiting past and current military and police members.
  • Economists are puzzled by O’Toole’s pledge to pursue a CANZUK trade deal, as it’s redundant if the UK joins the CPTPP – unless they want to boost labour mobility.
  • Brian Pallister says that he expects to be gone within weeks, leaving his legislative agenda to his successor to deal with.
  • BC is moving ahead with vaccination passports.

Odds and ends:

For CIGI Online, I look at the future of what was Bill C-10, and the plans to regulate Canadian content over online platforms.

My latest Loonie Politics Quick Take recaps what we learned on the first week of the election campaign.

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