platforme.pdf (application/pdf Object)

platforme.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Platform (?) of the Liberal Party of Canada, leaked to the Western Standard in the wee hours of the morning. Is this the real thing, an early draft, or something else entirely? We'll wait for the liberal spin machine to fire into gear to explain how this ended up on the internet ahead of schedule.

There are some interesting things. Page 5 gives us a breakdown of "the way things were" versus "the way things are" from 1993 to 2005, showing positive trends all, though otherwise blanking out variable dips and movement in all of these figures. For example, the paper presents the dollar as having moved from $0.75 to $0.86 USD over the 12 years, without noting the drop to $0.62 USD just a couple years ago. How many more of these figures have been skewed by relatively recent phenomena, and how much of these improvement can really be laid at the feet of the governing party? Has "a vicious circle ... been transformed into a virtuous circle" (p. 9) by the Liberals?

The rest of the policy statements look very interesting and socially progressive, though I think the discussion on health care continues to be reactive rather than progressively working on preventative care. I also find the statement that "cancer is the leading cause of premature death in Canada" (p. 14) interesting, as Statistics Canada reports that it is heart disease that holds that distinction, with cancer a close second. Though I may be wrong. Of note, death by automobile pulls in at 1% of all total deaths per year.

The discussion on public and private health care is a bit disingenious. on page 17, the Liberals unveil their "Public Health Care Protection Initiative" which sounds lovely, but there are so many caveats and sub-cluases that I find it hard to think any of it would ever be enforced. As an example:

Consider it a violation of the Canada Health Act if a physician provides the same medically-necessary services to some patients on a privately paid basis and others on a publicly-insured (medicare) basis, if such “dual practice” undermines access to publicly-insured services. (p. 17 - emphasis added)

Good luck trying to determine if the dual-practise undermines the public health system. That sounds like discretionary oversight and at least a decades worth of court battles to figure that one out.

I am reasonably pleased with the education intiatives the Liberals are rolling out as well, particularly with some of the intitiatives on reducing the front-end debt burden - the obstacle on University entry caused by high tuition fees, though much more still needs to be done to bring equity back into the University entrance system and ensure schools compete for students based on quality, and affluence. (Forgiving past debt loads would also be nice... hint hint)

The platform is rather shallow on the discussion of cities - what about investments in critical infrastructure, FULL sharing of the gas tax (not half!), finding new revenue sources for cities to work with? Not to much mention, beyond trupeting of the New Deal.

All in all, it seems to be a reasonable and balanced portfolio, with a few interesting surprises (weapons in space ban) and some glaring omissions (removal of notwithstanding clause). Not the disjointed, unclear document the Convservative Party would have us believe, but a good document to run on.