13 September 2004

The Biggest Sporran

All right, Laddies and Lassies, sit down and Uncle Scotsman will tell you a story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.

One day a friend of mine was sitting in his living room watching TV when he noticed his young son leaving the kitchen with a stuffed monkey in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other. Curious he asked the boy what he was doing. The boy promptly responded that he was going to his bedroom so he could spank his monkey. Naturally friend proceeded to kill himself laughing. The boy was totally dumbfounded because he didn’t understand the joke, and when my friend calmed down enough to explain to him that spanking the monkey was a euphemism for masturbation the boy was even more dumbfounded. To convince him my friend was forced to phone one of his neighbors that they knew well and ask the neighbor to explain the same thing to the boy. The boy still didn’t believe them. He just didn’t think that it was possible.

Perception is everything.

The Prime Minister has called the provincial Premiers and the territorial leaders together for a conference on health care. The conference is to last three days. The first day will consist of speeches in which the provincial and territorial governments will plead for more money from the feds. The second day will consist of speeches which really boil down to nothing more than haggling over the amount. The third day will consist of speeches where the provincial and territorial leaders thank the feds for their generosity while secretly cursing them for not handing over enough.

The stated purpose behind the conference is to brainstorm ways to reform the health care programs in Canada so that we can sustain them without having to throw vast sums of money at them, but we all know that it isn’t going to happen that way, because there seems to be this institutional mentality at the federal and provincial levels that the secret to healing a program lies in the application of more funds. And besides, no one really knows how to fix the problems with our health care system. Premier Klein claims to have some ideas, but the scant information released on his scheme suggests that he’s just looking for ways to pass more of the costs of health care on to Albertans through a revised premium structure. Fact notwithstanding that we’re the only province in Canada who pays health care premiums, now he wants to gouge us for even more money.

A few years back the Klein government commissioned a report on ways to reform the health care system. I have a copy of this report in my files. It’s an interesting collection of double-talk and bullshit. More than a hundred pages of text later and the only thing that the commission really said is that they don’t know how to fix the program but they do believe that new and interesting ways have to be found to funnel money into it. One of the ways suggested was to raise the level of taxation against booze and cigarettes. The price of cigarettes promptly skyrocketed, although the price of booze has remained relatively untouched because Premier Klein is an alcoholic and heaven forbid he should pay more for his vice.

I remember being outraged when I read the Mazankowski report. All that money spent just so that we can have several hundred pages of text and research which really said nothing more than WE NEED MORE MONEY!!! Committee hearings aren’t free, and neither are the reports they generate. What’s even more frustrating than the amount of money spent for the collection of sheer boondoggle received is the fact that since then nothing has been done about the report. No research into new and improved ways to reduce waiting times for procedures and to open up new hospital beds. Nothing.

To me that says that the Mazankowski report was a waste of money and was commissioned solely to give the Klein government an excuse to raise the price of cigarettes. Therefore we spent all that money on a piece of political maneuvering. Where did the vast majority of that money go? Probably into Don Mazankowski’s pocket, though I have no proof of that.

As a good and loyal Scotsman, and therefore a cheap and uncompromising bastard at heart, I have something of an issue with this gross misspending of public finds. Inflation is only getting worse, not better, and therefore our dollars don’t go as far as they used to. Prices start to go up because profits are getting smaller. At a time when all levels of government should be tightening its purse strings we instead get a situation in which money is handed out hand over fist for no discernable return, and when the provinces aren’t handing out money they’re demanding more. Some cities are just as bad.

To the government the words fiscal restraint are a contradiction in terms. That’s because the nature of politics isn’t to ensure the best interests of the people you represent but to funnel more and more of your constituents money into your own coffers. That’s not what their job description says, but it’s what their institutional mentality says.

Perception is everything.

Three days of talks on health care are going to go nowhere. It’s a waste of time and it’s a waste of money. It’s even more of a waste that the talks are being televised IN THEIR ENTIRETY! And it’s also another reason why people like me would never succeed in public office. Someone like me would start to preach radical ideas that the voters would listen to and that would make the established politicians feel uncomfortable and dirty. The establishment would then start looking for new and improved ways to drive us newcomers out to secure the status quo.

Politics nauseates me.