Rebecca Walberg

The death of a homeless man in an ER waiting room last fall, who spent 34 hours waiting for care (and likely was dead for the last 10 of those hours) before medical staff took note of him, is only the most recent outrageous ER death in a series that have occurred under the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.  Despite this, Health Minister Theresa Oswald has a Teflon-like ability to let mismanagement and lack of transparency slide off her.  The failures within the WRHA that led to this, and other, deaths are being investigated and remedied.  Not so for the political and bureaucratic failures within Manitoba Health.  Here’s my argument for why Oswald should resign.

In the National Post today:

When Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge, new leader of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, suggested there are more laws protecting organ transplants in Canada than fetuses, he gave the abortion debate shock therapy. One predictable outcome was disdain, and a call to focus on important things, namely the economy, in these uncertain times. Yet there is an economic angle to the abortion debate. In Canada today, abortion is available and publicly funded at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason. That’s our tax dollars providing free and timely elective surgery, in spite of the waiting lists and chronic resource shortages that plague our health care system in many other areas. Based on abortion statistics and the cost of the procedure in clinics and hospitals, that translates into $90-million a year, as a conservative estimate.

Read the rest here.

But if the government does want to put its fingers into this particular thorny mess, there are better and worse ways to do it.  Quebec’s example is one of the poorer approaches to the issue, as borne out by an MIT study that found kids in Quebec’s universal daycare have more physical and psychological problems, their parents become less attentive parents who are more depressed and have more tense marriages, and the whole scheme is a net money loser for the province.  A longer discussion of this is in today’s Winnipeg Free Press.

We’re accustomed to thinking of Canadian healthcare problems in terms of splashy failures and gross inefficiencies - people dying in ER waiting rooms, cancer victims who have to pay for their own chemotherapy, 18 month waits for surgery.  The problems with our healthcare system are pervasive, though, and cause a lot of problems that don’t register on the radar for most of us, but nonetheless cost the system time, money, and sometimes lives.  If all Canadians had an Electronic Health Record - think the medical equivalent of a credit report, with the basic facts easily accessible by anyone you allow to acces it - we’d spend less money, repeat fewer tests, and get treated more safely and effectively.  More on EHRs and the high cost of not investing in our system sensibly here.

I’ll take an expanded Conservative minority over a Liberal majority, minority, or coalition, but I can’t summon up the energy to pretend that last week’s election was anything to celebrate.  Why can’t Conservatives win full stop?  Are they still perceived as a western party, simply Reform rebranded?  Gerry Nicholls suggests that this is proof that incrementalism doesn’t work, or at least works only on a geologic time scale, and not one appreciable to humans.  He thinks we’ll be going through the whole circus in about a year’s time.  I think that’s pessimistic; as I write in a column aimed at Americans trying to make sense of our election, Harper can probably govern as if he had a majority, simply because the wrath of all Canadians will fall upon anyone who triggers an election in the near future.

Social conservatism was roundly ignored in 2008, and motivating the base enough to come out and vote Conservative might have made a difference.  It worked in Winnipeg South in 2006 and then again in 2008.  Rod Bruinooge is an example who should be studied by CPC riding associations that lost by narrow margins, as I explain in a column for the Edmonton Journal.

Much of the debate about climate change, emissions, and what steps should be taken focuses on what does or does not cause climate change, what policies can make a difference, and how far we must shift to be “green.”  Left off the table is any honest appraisal of how good environmental intentions hurt the poor.  Skyrocketing fuel costs, combined with higher grocery prices as farmers sell to biofuel companies as well as food manufacturers, are trivial to limousine liberals, a burden upon the middle class, and devastating to the poor.  Here’s an excerpt from my column on this for the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix:

Escalating fuel costs harm the poor disproportionately, acting as a de facto regressive tax. Thus, American families at the median income level pay five per cent of each household dollar for energy and those with lower incomes spend 20 per cent on energy, while households under the poverty line see fully half of their budget spent on gas, heating, and other fuel costs.

As in the U.S., certain minorities in Canada are disproportionately poor. To artificially inflate fuel costs therefore is not only an issue about class and wealth, but about race, and the disparate impact of carbon taxes and related policies must be acknowledged.

The full article is here.

A “wish list” for meaningful healthcare reform, at Canadian webzine c2cjournal.ca, is here.

And a column that I wrote two weeks ago, giving the outline of the election’s events and priorities for an American readership, is online here, at the website for The American, the magazine put out by the very influential American Enterprise Institute.  If I were writing it today, I’m not sure I’d be as optimistic.

On Tuesday, Stephane Dion spoke to a packed hall in Winnipeg South Centre, a riding that is expected to be fiercely contested in the next election. Instead of demonstrating strength and vision, the Leader of the Opposition exposed his weaknesses and the fragility of his platform.

The topic of the meeting was Dion’s Green Shift plan. Despite promoting this tax on carbon production, Dion conceded that a market-based cap and trade system would likely be in the works under a Liberal government. He spent as much time slamming Harper’s policies as he did explaining his own, and in the process revealed a fundamental lack of understanding of economics and government.

His major criticism of the government’s approach to limiting pollution was that it would make emissions more expensive without benefiting the environment. The fundamental purpose of any incentive program, though, is to decrease pollution, and raising the cost of carbon production would intrinsically encourage industry and consumers to look for carbon-neutral alternatives, thereby benefiting the environment.

Dion’s grasp of economics seemed even shakier when he excoriated the government for ending the days of budgetary surpluses. A surplus results when the government has collected more taxes from Canadians than it needs, money that Canadians could be saving or spending themselves. Eliminating surpluses by cutting taxes is therefore an excellent sign, indicating that the government has learned how to get by with less, and is leaving more money in the pockets of Canadians.

The reality of a carbon tax is that it would raise the price of necessities. Most Canadians eat food that has been transported some distance, which would cost significantly more under a carbon tax scheme than it does now. Heating a home is not a luxury, nor is it cheap even today. Few cities provide public transportation adequate to truly replace driving. For everyone but condo-dwellers in the downtowns of big cities, Dion’s carbon tax would dramatically raise the cost of living.

In Winnipeg, Dion argued that this would balance out. The carbon tax, he claims, would be used to finance income tax cuts, including refundable tax credits for households too poor to pay much tax. This may or may not work on paper. In reality, though, there is very little precedent for governments eliminating taxes. The major exception in Canadian politics has been the Harper Conservatives, who followed through on their promise to cut the GST. Dion, on the other hand, pledged to renew efforts to create a national daycare program, and increase subsidies for home renovations. Plans like that don’t come cheap, and make it less likely that a carbon tax would be the basis for a revenue neutral tax reform, rather than simply a massive tax hike.

The standing room only audience cheered enthusiastically whenever Dion slammed Harper, but couldn’t summon up much energy for the man himself. Dion came across in Winnipeg as the stereotypical academic that he used to be: brainy but disconnected from the people he hopes to lead, uncomfortable speaking off the cuff, and more suited to lengthy discussions about theory than to implementing solutions.

A platform can’t be built entirely on the environment when Canadians are dealing with healthcare waits, increasing costs of living, and an incipient economic slowdown. Unless Dion and the Liberals figure this out and add some substance to their campaign, the Conservatives could well win a majority this time.

Bill Murray (not that Bill Murray) was 57 years old when the province of Alberta refused to pay for his hip resurfacing, which would restore his mobility and greatly reduce joint pain, because he was too old to benefit from it. This is going to happen increasingly often to the Boomers, as they enter their peak medical care consumption years. Single payer, universal healthcare means that the market does not guide supply or demand. This means that bureaucrats do. Inevitably, this means that somebody other than you is going to decide what medical care you are entitled to. This should frighten all of us, and nobody more so than the entitled, wealthy and aging Baby Boom generation. Pajamas Media has my column on the Murray case, and others in which life, not just quality of life, was at stake, here.

A Saskatchewan rabbi criticizes a Catholic bishop who is protesting Morgentaler’s Order of Canada medal.  Here is the full text of the news article:

Saskatoon’s Roman Catholic bishop is calling on followers to protest the awarding of the Order of Canada to abortion-rights crusader Dr. Henry Morgentaler earlier this month. However, Bishop Albert LeGatt’s initiative is being criticized by a rabbi who says Dr. Morgentaler has done more for women’s rights than the Catholic Church. Saskatoon Rabbi emeritus Roger Pavey of the liberal congregation Agudas Israel said Bishop LeGatt was misguided, adding that even Orthodox Judaism considered abortion acceptable in some cases.

First, it is facile and offensive to suggest that Morgentaler has done more for women’s rights than the Catholic Church.  It reflects naked hostility to Catholicism that is unbecoming in a senior clergyman, profound bias, or ignorance of recent history, or most likely some blend of the three.  I’ll simply point out that given what we know about abortion and depression, breast cancer, and problems with subsequent pregnancies, Morgentaler has caused direct harm to many women quite apart from the actual damage women sustain when choosing to terminate a pregnancy.  The Catholic Church, like all massive and long-lived institutions, is imperfect, but in recognizing the sanctity of motherhood and encouraging women and men to form lifelong marriages, among others, it has certainly added to the net happiness of women in the world.

Next point: Rabbi Pavey points out that “even Orthodox Judaism” permits abortion in some circumstances.  This is absolutely true.  Rabbi Pavey assuredly knows, though, that those circumstances are very narrow, and in fact bear no resemblance to the circumstances in which Morgentaler has performed abortions.  Jewish law permits (and in some cases requires) abortion if continuing a pregnancy would kill the mother.  Note, please, that this is a vanishingly rare situation in 21st century Canada.  It is also noteworthy that there is no “mental health” exemption, which has been used to such mischief in some jurisdictions; since depression during and after pregnancy is largely treatable, the vast majority of Jewish legal authorities do not consider mental distress at an unwanted pregnancy to be a reason to abort.

There are also abundant sources in Jewish law indicating that, as a developing life, a fetus has great value and sanctity - but not quite as much as an existing life, so that when there is a mortal conflict between the life of the fetus and the life of the mother, we must choose the mother.  By the time either the head or the majority of the body has emerged from the womb, though, the baby has equal status as the mother, and it is forbidden to choose between them - no partial birth abortions permitted, in other words.  Also significant is that the conflict between the life of the fetus and an existing life applies only to the mother, ie the life that would be directly threatened if the pregnancy continued; destroying a fetus to save a third life, or many other lives, is also forbidden.

Here we get to the real intellectual dishonesty of Rabbi Pavey’s words.  Pavey is the Rabbi Emeritus of a Conservative congregation in Saskatoon.  Conservative Judaism, like Orthodox Judaism, believes in the binding and eternal nature of the covenant between God and the Jews.  Unlike Orthodox Judaism, which believes (to reduce a complicated issue to one phrase) that Jewish law is fixed, and can be applied to new situations but must not be adapted, Conservative Judaism believes that the component of the law that is subject to human interpretation can and must evolve as the understanding, wisdom and knowledge of humans evolve.  Nonetheless, Conservative Judaism recognizes that not all abortions are permitted by Jewish law.  The official position of Conservative Judaism on the politics of abortion is to oppose any law that might prevent abortions in the (extremely narrow set of) circumstances in which it is permitted by Jewish law.

Abortion to save the life of the mother has been permitted in Canada throughout Morgentaler’s career.  The slightly more lax circumstances in which Conservative Jewish law finds abortion acceptable (abortion to prevent serious injury to the mother, or severe mental anguish) have also been accommodated in practice in Canada throughout Morgentaler’s career.  Abortions that are permitted within Jewish law, in other words, already were permitted within Canadian law, and this has nothing to do with Morgentaler.  On the contrary, the very essence of Morgentaler was to shatter this status quo in favour of abortion at any time, for any woman, for any reason, and ideally at the taxpayer’s expense.  And he was most successful.

To discard a human life in a cavalier manner is profoundly contrary to the Jewish tradition, law and ethos.  To oppose laws that restrict abortion on the grounds that such laws might infringe upon the (incredibly rare) situations in which Jewish law permits abortion - the official position of Conservative Judaism - strikes me as extreme, unnuanced, but logically coherent.  To celebrate a man who devoted his life to making life disposable - the most sacred earthly thing in Judaism, such that we are permitted to break almost any other law in order to save a life - is reprehensible, and deeply unJewish.

Rabbi Pavey undoubtedly knows the position of his own movement on abortion.  He almost certainly knows that Orthodox Judaism (and until this century all of Judaism) sees abortion as a last resort, a tragic measure to be taken only to save the life of the mother.  I don’t know what he is trying to gain by this statement, but he has managed to fit contempt for women, Jewish law and tradition, both Orthodox and Conservative, and Catholicism, all into a couple of sentences.  There are better ways he could be using his time - teaching Jews and non-Jews alike that our religion holds all life to be sacred, even a developing life in the womb, for instance.

Cross-posted at PWPL.