[LabComm] "Let's just stop pretending"

[BC NDP NEWSWIRE]

"Let's just stop pretending"

Carole James responds to Gordon Campbell's Throne Speech

Carole James, Leader of the NDP Opposition, has responded to Gordon Campbell's  Throne Speech.

Here's an excerpt from what she said today.

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"The Throne Speech contained some very disturbing commitments that will affect the future health and well-being of average people in BC.

After years of privatizing by stealth and neglect, the government has now embarked on an agressive agenda to move to two-tiered health care.

The Premier says the principles of the Canada Health Act are ill-defined.

But the blame for growing health waitlists, overcrowded emergency rooms, and declining care for seniors rests with his government, not with the principles underlying Medicare.


The problem is not that the principles of the Canada Health Act are undefined; the problem is that this government has ignored those principles.

The government has begun using the word innovation in reference to health care.

But as we all saw last week, with the government's knee and hip-replacement scheme, innovation is just code for more privatization.

The first thing the Coastal Health Authority did with the money it was given, was run out and use taxpayer dollars to subsidize private, for-profit clinics.

That's not innovation.

It's not new. It's old.

It's not the future. It's the past.

For-profit medicine is an old idea. A failed idea.

No matter how the government tries to dress up its agenda, everyone here knows exactly what they're talking about.

So let's just stop pretending."

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To read more, click <a href="http://nid-15929.newsdetail.bc.ndp.ca/">here</a> to visit the BC NDP Website.

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