04.19.2011 10:16 PM

Lib ad kicks ass on health care

Wonder if the Reformatories are regretting objecting so much to the last one? This one is way, way worse for them.

46 Comments

  1. Patrick says:

    The scary Steve thing again? Last refuge of a desperate Liberal.

  2. Craig Chamberlain says:

    RED HOT BUT… It needs some follow-up — otherwise it can just as well be a great spot for the NDP.

  3. Stuart says:

    Much better! Hopefully they have more like that coming (and it’s not too late…)

  4. I don’t think fear will work anymore, for five years he has provided stable government. That is a long probationary period, I think Canada will lift the probation. The jury is still out on Iggy though and more doubt today, he seemed angry at Mansbridge for Pete’s sake.

    • Craig Chamberlain says:

      If only fear didn’t work!

      (Now THAT would be quite a problem for Mr. Harper, wouldn’t it!)

    • Patrick Hamilton says:

      Sorry, Mr. Harper has not been able to attempt what he would like to do with health care because the Opposition has had Mr. Harper on a very short leash. His opposition to universality is a matter of public record, as the Liberal ad makes abundantly clear.
      I dont trust him off-leash on healthcare(or on a whole host of issues for that matter), and I am hoping the Canadian electorate doesnt either…..

    • Al in Cranbrook says:

      May be the worst performance by a leader in an interview during a campaign I’ve yet seen. Couldn’t help but get a sense that he can’t wait until this is over so he get the hell out of Dodge and go back to whatever it was he used to do.

      Q: “Total power?” As in, “You don’t think that’s pretty ridiculous?”

      A: Pretty much, “Jeez, Peter! Cut me some slack, will ya?”

    • Lance says:

      Well, Liberals will argue that those five years haven’t been very stable with Harper browbeating the Liberals with a confidence measure everytime something came up to be voted on, that he never worked with Parliament, yadda yadda yadda. However, you know that Harper is going to go to the people and say to the effect of, “the Tories governed for five years with the help of the Opposition, we couldn’t have been that bad”, and/or “they can’t say I didn’t know how to work with Parliament when I kept a minority goverment going for five years”. And you know what, it is an easy selling point that will be made. Afterall, Harper himself said at one time that, “the longer I am Prime Minister, the longer I will be Prime Minister”.

    • Namesake says:

      well, Ignatieff kept his cool just fine, but I was annoyed by that interview, for the way Mansbridge picked at scabs, and was overly judgmental and seemingly completely oblivious to the political realities of the situation, in dwelling so long on the new political ads in the first half of the interview.

      It’s almost like Mansbridge was autistic or something… or was working for the other camp. (More like, singing for their supper, to try to protect themselves from losing their funding.)

      It’d be like a 10-year old student newspaper reporter interviewing a boxer mid-fight, at the end of round 8, thus:

      Why are you trying to hit him so hard (i.e., why are you running attack ads?)

      [Well, cuz we’re in a fight, and he’s been attacking me, and I’m losing, so have to fight back, dumbass.]

      Oh, that’s right, he’s been pummeling you for 8 rounds ( 2+ years); say: which hits hurt the most, huh? huh? Come on, which ones really got to you… where don’t you want to be hit again?

      [When he hit below the belt, jerkwad: what do you think, you moron?!]

      And how come you didn’t hit back, snicker, snicker.

      [Cuz I only have enough energy (money) to do it in the final round when it really counts, you know that.]

      But now you’re trying to attack him; why are you doing that?!

      [Sigh… who is this guy?]

    • Pete says:

      Mansbridge was out to trip him up and couldn’t…mansbridge deserved the anger

      • Philip says:

        Exactly this point. As too Mansbridge deserving the anger, while I didn’t see any and there is no reason Ingatieff should have been angry. It was a tough interview, but good, Ignatieff handled it very very well. Mansbridge had previously ripped Jack a new one about never becoming PM, essentially calling him a diversion from serious politics. I can’t wait to see the Harper interview.
        Bottom line for me. Mansbridge was tough but fair and our boy knocked it out of the park.

    • nic coivert says:

      Fear does work, Harper lives on it, but this is fear of a different sort.

      That is Harper’s plan, he’ll gut the Health Act, no denying it either. Does anybody really want a laisses faire capitalist reconstructing our national health system. I’ll take Iggy and Jack on that one anyday, and so will the majority of Canadians.

      Co-operation when necessary but not necessarily coalition.

    • fritz says:

      Stable Government!!! Are you on crack?
      He’s initiated two elections and allowed this one to take place. He prorogued Parliament to prevent his governments defeat and thus almost caused a constitutional crisis.
      He led the first government to ever have been found in contempt of Parliament.
      His government has made the committee system in Parliament virtually unworkable.
      He has had literally dozens of ethics scandals.
      He tried to destroy public funding for elections and caused a Parliamentary crisis.
      His PMO has interfered in dozens of cases of government appointments, blocked FOI requests, blocked legitimate requests for documents by Parliament and interfered with Parliamentary committee appointments & work etc.
      This has been the most unstable 5 years in Canadian Parliamentary history. That’s why he wants a majority. He wants a stable dictatorship without anyone to block or even argue against his far right agenda. Luckily he has the support of only a third of the country so his secret agenda is unlikely to ever be foisted on Canadians.

  5. Phil says:

    The Liberal line of fearing Harper stopped working a long time ago and now that Iggy has re-opened the coalition government option, the relevant fear is of exactly that. Canadians will vote NDP or Conservative as a result because the Liberal election platform will be torn apart by socialists and separatists.

  6. jon evan says:

    WK, this is now disgusting!
    To use healthcare as a “lib ad” to “kick ass” is plain disgusting and stupid and you know that.
    Has it come to this? As a physician I find it plain dumb and callous for the LPC to play politics by frightening sick patients by this kind of fear mongering!

    I understand you are a spin doctor but you are not a medical doctor and you don’t know about healthcare! Tell the LPC to stop scaring my patients with this kind of nonsense. NO political party in Canada cares about healthcare right now! I know that, my patients know that and you know that! To think that Ignatieff cares about sick people is just wild and a sign of crazy desperation. They need to stop it.

    • Robin says:

      Are you a proctologist? I know that hanging out with Conservatives so much you would have to love assholes.

    • Your patients should be scared.

      It is a matter of public record that the National Citizens Coalition is an organization founded for and devoted to eliminating the reach of the Canada Health Act and universality is a key tenet of that legislation.

      It is a matter of public record that Stephen Harper has argued against universality, but not in a detached academic fashion, he has actually preached disdain for the concept.

      As policy director of the Reform Party Stephen Harper echoed the views of the National Citizens Coalition.

      The fact that Stephen Harper worked for the National Citizens Coalition, and later became President of that anti-Health Act, anti-universality, anti-bilingualism, anti-provincial equality organization, is a matter of public record. Under Harper’s leadership he did not disavow himself from the record of the NCC but built upon it.

      Harper’s view is that the federal government has no place in the lives of ordinary Canadians. None. Other prime ministers, including Progressive Conservative John Diefenbaker and Liberal Mike Pearson, have fortunately not been in agreement with Harper’s view.

      If Canadians projected today’s Harper back to the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s, they would see Stephen Harper leading the charge fighting anyone who tried to advance provincial and national health care programs. If Harper were in charge rather than Diefenbaker, or Pearson, we’d have no Canada Health Act today.

      If ever given a majority mandate Harper will take steps to divorce federal responsibility from health provision in Canada. We will see the development of have and have not provinces. Individuals increasingly will have to shoulder the burden of payment personally.

      What do you really think those TFSA accounts are for, anyway? They are just another version of G.W. Bush’s Health Savings Account but without any direct tie-in to Medicare. Consider them a foreshadowing of the future.

      TFSAs. Doubling of annual contribution limits. Reduction of consumption taxes (GST/HST). Lower corporate taxes. Even lower personal income taxes. Does this sound like a government which intends to have the financial means to supports Medicare in the years going forward? Or does this sound like a government which doesn’t plan on funding very much at all?

      Transfers to the provinces being protected is all well and good, provided there is overarching federal legislation that mandates provincial behavior. The path Harper is on is to eliminate those safeguards and let the provinces do there own thing, taking us back to the 1940’s. This is exactly what the Fraser Institute is agitating for, right now.

      It is perfectly reasonable to introduce the prior work and opinion of Harper, developed over decades, into this and every election debate. His opinions on universality and equalization are quite contrary to modern Canadian thinking, yet he won’t, as leader of the Conservative Party, even admit to these thoughts. Instead he hides behind whatever thin veneer of spin he can create so as to create the illusion that he supports the status quo. He doesn’t, and never has.

      Doctor, your patients *should* be scared. And if you happen to live in a funding-challenged province, maybe your patients should consider moving to another, before its too late.

  7. msgjp says:

    Well I, for one, really liked it. It’s never too late for delightful ads like this. As for Derek who says that Harper has provided stable government…Ahem…Stable for whom? I actually voted for Harper the first time around and I think that many like me who voted for him (the Cons) back then have seen the light. Didn’t take long for me to regret that vote.

  8. When did the Liberals hire Matt Drudge to do their ads for them? I’d comment on the content of the ad, but it caused me to have a seizure, so I was busy twitching on the floor.

  9. Lance says:

    Agreed, it is a good ad, but it has the same problem as the other one – too little, too late.

    • Might not be too late if Iggy touches the heart strings of adults with aging parents everywhere. As the years roll on I’m caring more and more about the health care issue where when I first was interested in politics I barely thought about it.

      I suspect my mother, who doesn’t particularly like Ignatieff (not for any reason she can articulate), likes the traditional definition of marriage and being an old fashioned Catholic might be tempted to vote for a Conservative to back Harper just for that one stand. She’s also swayed by Catholic propaganda on euthanasia and believes there’s a bill about to pass any day now. She may just be pretty typical of a Canadian who doesn’t really look at the issues any deeper than what glimpses she sees on her T.V.

      But she will take a hard look at that ad and, I think, find it sways her some distance.

      Why?

      Well, for one she was a RN for decades, and mistrusts government in general when it comes to health care funding.

      Now in her retirement very recently she has had to take a trip to emerg in an ambulance and stay for a couple days. While her bed wasn’t in a Tim Hortons it might as well have been. Were she self-funding her own health care she’d already be bankrupted by fees for her on-going care since retirement.

      She’s always been sensitive to healthcare issues while working in the system and now that she’s using them rather than delivering them, she’s definitely thinking about who she would trust most. Interestingly (maybe not too surprisingly) healthcare pretty much trumps most issues for her. Even marriage and euthanasia.

      Take every old mom or dad out there like mine and multiply that by 2.2 sons (or 3.5) sons or daughters who are passively or actively looking after mom or dad, and by the way some of us are getting up there in age too. Suddenly you’ve got millions of people who *should* take an interest in this and its a bigger group of people than it has ever been before in modern day elections.

      That ol’ Mom and Dad haven’t been a bigger focus in this election and health care in general until really quite late in the game is pretty surprising to me.

      Not quite two weeks? Plenty of time to change that.

      I’d like to see both Layton and Ignatieff get to work on this topic PDQ. It really is Harper’s Achilles heel. He can only spin bland statements about “6%” so far.

  10. Tomas says:

    This is an even newer version. But the Tories have another just-visiting ad blended in with something about honesty. It is getting a bit wierd, not Ezra Levant SUN TV wierd, but still …

  11. Fraser Institute calls Canada Health Act a barrier and calls for its suspension (PDF).

    Good ol’ boys Preston Manning and Mike Harris are senior fellows of the Fraser Institute.

    Canadian Medical Association weigh in, labelling Fraser Institute claim “baseless”, calling on federal leaders to address this issue.

    Just under two weeks left? Big issue on the radar? Hmnn, anything could happen.

  12. JS Rothwell says:

    “I will be trolling Warren Kinsella’s musings for dirt and of course readership.” – http://derekkrichards.blogspot.com/

    and I cant tell which is worse, your trolling or your blog d-Keef.

  13. Curt says:

    Warren,
    Off topic but what are your thoughts on the CBC interview with Michael today?

  14. Phill St Louis says:

    Iggy did not seem angry at Mansbridge, for Pete’s sake.

  15. Dude Love says:

    Is this the “game changer”??

    How many “game changers” are the Liberals going to have in this campaign?

  16. Sean says:

    not bad… should have come out a month ago.

  17. nic coivert says:

    Laissez faire, that is. The last great capitalist of such ilk in Canada was R.B. Bennett, who had a power base in Calgary. And we no how that ended up for ordinary Canadians.

    The Bennett Buggy was a car without an engine pulled by a horse; what would a Harper Hospital look like?

  18. smelter rat says:

    Ignatieff agrees to follow Canadian Constitution!! Stop the presses!!!

    • Namesake says:

      you’re sure throwing a lot of “c” words around pretty carelessly in a big shell game, there.

      “Coalition” has an actual meaning in this context — signed agreement on a shared platform, with Cabinet Ministers being drawn from all the participating parties — which is NOT on the table, acc. to MI; what IS, is what Harper’s been doing the past 5 years — governing as a minority, getting support from the indiv. parties on a bill by bill base, if he can — and what he proposed to do in 2004.

      So stop lying (“Thus a minority parliament will bs a coalition parliament”).

    • Patrick Hamilton says:

      “Not necessarily a coalition, but a coalition if necessary”…w/apolgies to MacKenzie King….

      Woiks for me, Mr. Tulk….anything that keeps Mr. Harpers hands of my universal healthcare, same-sex marriage, a womens right to choose, long gun registration, protecting the environment, food safety, and anything else that doesnt fit into “Dear Leaders” ideology…..

      Three kicks at the can, and the Con shivs come out for Mr. Harper, and we wind up with a new Con leader who’s a bit more enlightened(save Jason Kenney or John Baird, but, well you know)……A happy day that shall be!….

  19. cat says:

    it is a better ad than the first one technically, but it’s not going to work much in Ontario I’m betting what with the provincial gov’t’s e-health trip-up and the LHINS havens.
    Also, there’s a nice balance of public/private healthcare available in Ontario already and guess what it’s not something to be afraid of in the least. Maybe the other parts of the country will buy what the ad’s selling? Who knows.

    • Ron says:

      You make a good point about the happenings in Ontario re: health care
      Plus it’s funny how both provincial Liberal governments in Ontario and Quebec are already mixing in private with public care

      The Liberals would have been better to create an ad that showed how they would change and improve the delivery of health care
      that would resonate with people

    • The more fundamental issue isn’t how health care gets delivered but how it gets paid for and who is covered.

      If you don’t believe in universality, have argued against it your entire adult life *except* when running for office, you don’t believe in our universal health care system.

      There’s only one national party leader that has argued against universality throughout his career and that is Stephen Harper.

  20. Ron says:

    Reminds me of the intro to The Naked Gun Movies / TV series Police Squad with Leslie Nielson.
    Other than that similiar to the other ad and won’t get the desired result they’re looking for

    Secondly…
    why have the Cons not come out with any new ads?
    Their internal polling must be indicating something that is not being reported

  21. Elisa says:

    if everyone wants to know about Harper, look up The Northern Foundation and Heritage Front….google will give you a good read!

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