It appears the Conservatives are determined to dominate the early part of the campaign.
...Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is expected to make another major policy announcement Friday as the federal party leaders near the end of their first week of campaigning.
Harper, who will be speaking in Winnipeg, is expected to talk about health care. He will then travel to Regina for a rally with local candidates.
This appears to be a page out of the Mike Harris Revolution playbook. Make it an issue a day cand keep your party on the front pages and your momentum growing.
It seems to be working so far.
Update: It is a Patient Wait Times Guarantee. This is from the press release:
...The guarantee is a positive, forward-looking plan to protect Canada’s public health care system while complying with the principles of the Canada Health Act, treating all patients equally for essential health care services regardless of ability to pay, and maintaining a single-payer, publicly funded health care system.
“There will be no private, parallel system,” Harper said.
“Despite the denials of the Liberal government, reforms have been taking place — especially in alternative, private delivery of publicly insured services. We can and will achieve better results for patients and maintain the essentials of our system of public health insurance while maintaining our universal public health care system.”
The concept of the Guarantee is that patients must be able to receive treatment in a medically acceptable maximum time for a publicly insured service. If this is not available in their own area, they must be given the option of receiving treatment at another hospital or clinic, even outside of their home province. Since the Liberals took power, the average waiting time for treatment has almost doubled, to 18 weeks.
The Patient Wait Times Guarantee will be based on the recommendation of the bi partisan Senate committee chaired by Michael Kirby and Marjory LeBreton, with the key contribution of Dr. Wilbert Keon. It will fulfill the commitment that federal and provincial governments made last year when they agreed to establish maximum acceptable waiting times for key treatments and procedures and then meet those standards — but the Conservative plan will be implemented right away, not delayed until December 2007. The plan also responds to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in the Chaoulli case.
“Clearly and unequivocally embracing the Patient Wait Times Guarantee is the only way governments can preserve both the principles of the Canada Health Act and the Charter of Rights,” Harper said.
This seems to be "mom and apple pie" stuff to me but at least it gets rid of the two-tier bogeyman.
Update II: From the word go in this campaign Paul Martin tried to make this election (in English Canada) a question of whether you wanted Stephen Harper as Prime Minister. This looks to have played right into the Conservatives hands as day after day they have set the agenda. Sometimes negatively, sometimes positively. but it has consistently been what policy will Stephen Harper introduce today. As the Calgary Grit says, the Conservatives are framing the debate.
...By getting all his policy out there early, he'll end the talk of a "hidden agenda". What could also be extremely problematic for the Liberals is if they don't have any policy to announce. Let's face it, a lot of Liberal policy got buried in the Roman orgy of spending and if there's nothing left to lure voters to the Liberal fold, Martin could be in deep trouble.
Not only that but Bob Tarantino points out that the Conservatives have managed to shift the discussion to the right.
...Dueling tax-cut proposals. The centre of gravity just shifted rightward (I know that the NDP is opposed to the sort of broad tax cut that Harper is proposing, but the sheer electoral size and weight of the Liberals and Tories means that whatever those two parties are focusing on is for all intents and purposes the focus of the campaign in that moment) - again, a critical step for the Conservatives, because now they are determining the tempo and focus of the election. Can they keep this sort of momentum going for the next two months? It will be extremely difficult to do so, but their conduct in the first few days of the election bodes well.
I very much agree with that last statement.
