Healthcare: Part of The Canadian Identity

I believe Stephen Harper should be charged with treason...



"We also support the exploration of alternative ways to deliver health care. Moving toward alternatives, including those provided by the private sector, is a natural development of our health care system."
- Stephen Harper, Toronto Star, October 2002.



"It's past time the feds scrapped the Canada Health Act."
- Stephen Harper, then Vice-President of the National Citizens Coalition, 1997.



"What we clearly need is experimentation with market reforms and private delivery options [in health care]."
- Stephen Harper, then President of the NCC, 2001.



"You have to remember that west of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated by people who are either recent Asian immigrants or recent migrants from Eastern Canada; people who live in ghettos and are not integrated into Western Canadian society."
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, in Report Newsmagazine, 2001.



"Nay."
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper voting against a motion urging the Canadian government not to participate in the US military intervention in Iraq, March 20, 2003.



"It's the idea that we just have to go along, we can't change it, things won't change. I think that's the sad part, the sad reality traditional parties have bred in parts of Atlantic Canada."
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper talks about the Atlantic provinces, May 2002.



"A weak nation strategy..."
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper describes Canada's historic foreign policy position of multilateralism.



"Continental economic and security integration" with the U.S. as well as a "continental energy strategy" that should be broadened "to a range of other natural resources."
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper.



"Abrasively neutral."
- Conservative leader Stephen harper on Canada's position on Iraq.



"Whether Canada ends up with one national government or two governments or 10 governments, the Canadian people will require less government no matter what the constitutional status or arrangement of any future country may be."
- Stephen Harper in a 1994 National Citizens Coalition speech.



"The time has come to recognize that the U.S. will continue to exercise unprecedented power in a world where international rules are still unreliable and where security and advancing of the free democratic order still depend significantly on the possession and use of military might."
- Stephen Harper, May, 2003, speech to the Institute for Research on Public Policy.



"A culture of defeat..."
- Stephen Harper, describing the Atlantic provinces, May 2001.


"I have always said that controversial issues of a moral or religious nature, such as abortion, should be settled by free votes of MPs, not by party policy."
- Stephen Harper.



"The Liberals have allowed a handful of tenured judges to create a situation where churches, synagogues, mosques and temples could be compelled to perform marriages that violate their own moral codes."
- Stephen Harper attacking the Liberals on same-sex marriage, News Hound, September 7th 2003. The proposed law specifically precludes any church, synagogue or mosque from having to conduct any marriage which violates their belief system.



"I think it's a typical hidden agenda of the Liberal party... They had the courts do it for them, they put the judges in they wanted, then they failed to appeal -- failed to fight the case in court... I think the federal government deliberately lost this case in court and got the change to the law done through the back door."
- Stephen Harper, attacking the Liberals on same-sex marriage by claiming a conspiracy, News Hound, September 7th 2003.

"I know this is a dangerous subject. My advisors say don't talk about it, but the fact is sometimes provinces have allowed in the past few years, they've brought in private services covered by public health insurance... Why do I care and why do we care as a federal government how they're managed? What we care about is whether people can access them. This is just an ideological agenda."
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper at the leadership debate, June 15th 2004, conceding that he shouldn't talk about his positive view of privatization of health care.



"It was probably not an appropriate term, but we support the war effort and believe we should be supporting our troops and our allies and be there with them doing everything necessary to win."
- Stephen Harper supporting the US-lead war on Iraq, Montreal Gazette, April 2nd 2003. Harper also called then-Defence Minister John McCallum an "idiot."



"Withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan... Collect our own revenue from personal income tax... Resume provincial responsibility for health-care policy. If Ottawa objects to provincial policy, fight in the courts... [E]ach province should raise its own revenue for health... It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta... "
- Stephen Harper in an "Open letter to Ralph Klein," January 24th 2001.



"Universality has been severely reduced: it is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy... These achievements are due in part to the Reform Party..."
- Stephen Harper, speech to the Colin Brown Memorial Dinner, National Citizens Coalition, 1994.

"I was asked to speak about Canadian politics. It may not be true, but it's legendary that if you're like all Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians."
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

"Now 'pay equity' has everything to do with pay and nothing to do with equity. It’s based on the vague notion of 'equal pay for work of equal value,' which is not the same as equal pay for the same job."
- Stephen Harper, NCC Overview, Fall 1998.



"For taxpayers, however, it’s a rip-off. And it has nothing to do with gender. Both men and women taxpayers will pay additional money to both men and women in the civil service. That’s why the federal government should scrap its ridiculous pay equity law."
- Stephen Harper on pay equity, NCC Overview, Fall 1998.



"It will come as no surprise to anybody to know that I support the traditional definition of marriage as a union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, as expressed in our traditional common law."
- Stephen Harper, Hansard, Address in the House of Commons on Bill C-38, February 16, 2005.

"If you've read any of the official propagandas, you've come over the border and entered a bilingual country. In this particular city, Montreal, you may well get that impression. But this city is extremely atypical of this country... So it's basically an English-speaking country, just as English-speaking as, I would guess, the northern part of the United States."
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.



"The NDP could be described as basically a party of liberal Democrats, but it's actually worse than that, I have to say. And forgive me jesting again, but the NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men."
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.



"Then there is the Progressive Conservative party, the PC party, which won only 20 seats. Now, the term Progressive Conservative will immediately raise suspicions in all of your minds. It should... They were in favour of gay rights officially, officially for abortion on demand. Officially -- what else can I say about them? Officially for the entrenchment of our universal, collectivized, health-care system and multicultural policies in the constitution of the country."
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.



"The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things."
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.