Are We Serious About Human Health? The Rhetoric and Gestures Say Yes, But The Evidence Says No

The government pretends to care deeply and profoundly about human health, using police state measures in a time of crisis, justified by their supposed great concern for health. Yet, the federal government has repeatedly slashed health care funding for the past 40 years.

The blatant and extreme hypocrisy and deceit should be obvious to all. Canada is one of the seven richest countries on Earth. There is no excuse for letting people live in poverty, letting children and the elderly live in poverty, or refusing to fully fund health care.

Further, while chronically refusing to fully fund health care, the federal government gives away billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks to Big Oil companies, most of them foreign-owned – and this, in the midst of a growing environmental and climate emergency.

There is no other word for this than sheer corruption, or crony capitalism. If we are at all serious about human health, then we must demand that Canada, and the Canadian federal government in particular, fully fund health care.

We must demand that a free and just society requires, first of all, freedom and constitutional rights for all, with freedom to choose which health care treatments we will accept or refuse; and secondly, we must demand that health care, education, pensions and public services take priority over corporate profits, especially with regard to the planet-destroying oil and gas industry.

If we cannot do these two things, then we cannot pretend to be a free and democratic society, or a just society, or to have any serious concern about human health at all. If we cannot do these two things, then we are a morally bankrupt nation, with a deeply corrupt government, and are headed rapidly toward a dark age of tyranny, at that.

Speak up now. Write a brief letter to your Member of Parliament, or copy this one to use, and modify it as you will; and send copies to your MPP, local council and mayor, the media, and to all your friends, family and colleagues.

In the midst of both a health crisis and an environmental crisis, as well as a deep and growing, ominous crisis of democracy, what we need above all is clarity of perspective, combined with boldness of action. Currently we are lacking in both. This must change this now.

It is not just in Canada, of course, where the hypocrisy, corruption and deceit are systemic and extreme. The richest nation in history, the US, refuses to fund public health care, saying it is unaffordable; yet, both Republican and Democratic governments continue to give trillions of dollars to Wall Street, whenever Big Business asks for it. The UK, meanwhile, is currently demolishing its public health care system, while pretending to care deeply about human health.

The pattern is global: create socialism and a welfare state for the super-rich, massively fund big business, give a bottomless feeding trough for the billionaires to feed on public funds, and demand austerity for the 99%.

When do we say, “Enough!”?

J. Todd Ring,
Cobourg, Ontario,
Canada

Author of Enlightened Democracy, and, The People vs The Elite

For further information see: Gary Null, GreenMedInfo, Naomi Wolf, Vandana Shiva, and Canadian constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati

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