Comment

Private pharma must die to save Canadian lives

Progress toward truly universal medicare must break decades-long slump

COMMENT

Lucas Edmond, staff Today, Canada’s universal health-care system is as popular as it was when it was first introduced decades ago. Most Canadians praise our system as proof of an empathetic society. To this day, political parties have not dared to challenge its dominance in Canadian popular opinion.

The unfortunate truth is, however, our universal system isn’t as comprehensive as the original blueprint was designed to be. The historic movement toward equitable access to medicare started with great momentum in the 1950s and slowly met an impasse in the political arena afterward.

After a fateful political campaign in the small yet politically influential province of Saskatchewan, Tommy Douglas — then leader of the province’s Co-operative Commonwealth Federation — won a sweeping majority on the party’s promise to introduce fair and equitable health care to all provincial residents on June 8, 1960.

In the following year, the popularity of universal medicare spread promptly from Saskatchewan into national debate. As a result, a Royal Commission was established to analyze the benefits and costs of a Canadian public health-care system.

After being appointed chair of the commission, conservative-leaning justice Emmett Hall shocked the nation by concluding all facets of medical care should be bundled into one single-payer system to maximize and ensure public administration, accessibility, comprehensiveness, universality and portability. In 1966, the Medical Care Act passed, officially setting Canada on a path toward a national health-care system.

However, despite the report’s conclusion in 1961, there remain large gaps in Canada’s health-care framework. Pharmaceutical insurance continues to be dominated by private, for-profit enterprises and the nation’s public health coverage fails as soon as Canadians are handed a prescription.

Over 50 years ago, Hall recommended that “in view of the high cost of many of the new life-saving, life-sustaining and disease-preventing medicines, prescribed drugs should be introduced as a benefit of the public health services program.” Yet Canada remains the only nation with a universal health-care system that does not include universal pharmaceutical coverage. As a result, nearly one in five Canadians don’t have access to drug insurance. Worse yet, one in 10 cannot afford prescription drugs. These stats lead to the death of up to 640 Canadians yearly.

With the upcoming election on Sept. 20, universal pharmacare is gearing up to become a key wedge issue. However, although the topic features contentious debate between parties, according to a national survey completed in 2019 by Canadian research firm Abacus Data, a majority of voters rank universal pharmacare as their top priority for parliamentary cooperation.

Beyond this, the survey concluded that 89 per cent of New Democratic Party (NDP) voters, 86 per cent of Green party voters, 84 per cent of Liberal party voters, 78 per cent of Bloc Québécois voters and 66 per cent of Conservative party voters support the idea of incorporating pharmacare into Canada’s single-tiered healthcare system.

So, why has pharmacare been a wedge issue for such a prolonged period when, according to principles of representational democracy, it should be a bipartisan issue? In large part, it is the same barrier that moderated Canada’s medicare plan in the first place — people who serve to profit from private pockets of medicare continue to have a large influence in the political arena.

Most arguments against a national pharmacare plan claim the program would be far too expensive for government coffers to handle. According to a 2017 report done by the parliamentary budget officer, a nonpartisan researcher that advises the parliament, a universal pharmacare system would have cost roughly $20 billion if it was established in 2015 and would save Canadians about $4 billion a year in expenses. This is not to mention all the medical expenses saved by giving Canadians access to preventative prescription drugs.

Considering Canada would actually save money by implementing a better organized pharmacare plan, all the while ensuring every citizen — regardless of socioeconomic status — receives adequate medication, those at the top would be the only players served losses. To be precise, private insurance and pharmaceutical companies would miss out on approximately $8,000 in profits per minute.

Just like the infamous anti-medicare doctors’ strike in 1962, special interest groups with significant resources influence our ability to make meaningful steps toward a pharmacare agenda.

Elections have been won and lost because of this issue. In 2019, the Liberal party campaigned on a plan to implement pharmacare likely stealing a significant portion of votes from the NDP, which also prioritized this issue. In February 2021, however, the NDP tabled a bill that would have kickstarted parliamentary progress toward universal pharmacare — all but two Liberal members of parliament (MP) teamed up with the Conservative party to stop the bill in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

staff / Dallin Chicoine graphic /

consensus in parliament — it has actively attacked Canadians’ chances to pursue policy reform that every nine in 10 Canadians approve of.

Time and time again, the Liberal party has succumbed to the interests of corporate giants. So far, the Liberal party has promised to include pharmacare in its political agenda since 1997 and is doing so again this year. It appears fighting for Canadians’ right to life-saving pharmaceuticals only matters to Liberal MPs when their power is in jeopardy. When the Liberals control the House of Commons, however, their true colours shine through — one need only remember the impolitic tweet from Toronto Liberal MP Adam Vaughan when he addressed blocking the NDP’s pharmacare bill: “Who gives a fuck.”

As Tommy Douglas predicted, “Unless there is a concerted effort to apply pressure on the federal and provincial governments, the erosion of medicare will continue unabated and might even be accelerated.” If we wish to live up to Douglas’s standards for Canadian health care pharmacare must be made a priority. Political excuses, lack of reform and broken promises are killing Canadians.

’Toban cornertable

David Bergen — ‘Out of Mind’

ARTS & CULTURE

Emily Unrau-Poetker, volunteer staff David Bergen is celebrated as one of Canada’s best writers, and his works have received plenty of recognition in the form of nominations for the Governor General’s Literary Awards and the Dublin Literary Award. His body of work includes several novels and short story collections, including last year’s Here the Dark, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize. His latest work, Out of Mind, is a companion piece to his novel The Matter with Morris, another Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist from 2010.

In Out of Mind, Bergen takes the reader deep into the mind of Lucille Black, a psychiatrist who struggles to guide herself through difficulty, even though she is adept at doing so for others. Her ex-husband has published a memoir that intimately details their life, their relationship and the death of their son, and this exposition of personal grief has impressed on her a profound feeling of betrayal.

The novel follows Lucille as she travels to Thailand, where her daughter has joined an apparent cult, then on to France to attend the wedding of a former flame. Bergen parallels Lucille’s physical journey across the globe in the emotional and mental journey she embarks on as she wrestles with her role in her family. In meeting the needs of her children, grandchild and ex-husband, she has compromised her dedication to herself.

Out of Mind brings the reader into Lucille’s rich and complex inner life. Through her thoughts and feelings about the people she meets, the places she sees and the things she experiences, we come to understand that Lucille is a woman torn — torn out of her comfort zone, torn by the loss of her son and the dissolution of her marriage and torn between her duty to her friends and family and her personal desires.

By way of memories of her past and moments in her present, the story of Lucille’s life plays out in a sharp and unidealistic way. Bergen portrays Lucille to the reader in much the same way that she sees the world: brutally and beautifully detailed. Her analytical — and critical — mind may make her seem uncompromising, but it is obvious that she is as stringent with herself as she is with others. Reading through Out of Mind, the reader is drawn into Lucille’s gravity and cannot help but root for her to find that which she seeks.

Her memories of friends, lovers, family members, patients and strangers comprise the lens that Lucille uses to explore her wants and needs and to get to know herself. In life’s endless cycle of love and loss, sadness and happiness and pain and pleasure, she seems to seek something that is almost universally sought: peace, both within and outside of herself.

Lucille’s story and character reflect the realities of life, reassuring us that we are not alone in our joy or in our pain. In spite of all she has faced, she is still standing. Her strength and her struggle are so quintessentially human that they act as an important reminder that our vulnerability and our perseverance is not for naught.

image / Goose Lane Editions / provided

David Bergen’s Out of Mind will be available Sept. 14.

arts@themanitoban.com

A special edition of the Evie Awards

Awards celebrate shows that kept theatre alive during the pandemic

ARTS & CULTURE

Shaylyn Maharaj-Poliah, staff The Winnipeg Theatre Awards, or the Evies, presented its fifth annual awards ceremony online via YouTube Aug. 30. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ceremony celebrated a theatre season unlike any other. Many performances were cancelled or postponed over the past year and a half, but the magic of theatre never left. Rather, it changed and persevered, with many theatre companies moving their productions from in-person to digital media outlets.

The Evies — named after Winnipeg actor Evelyne “Evie” Anderson — have been celebrating the arts and recognizing excellence in Winnipeg’s professional theatre community both onstage and behind the scenes since 2017.

The ceremony was carried by a quartet of hosts. Actor Gabriel Daniels opened the show with a “Winnipeg Welcome.” Artistic director of Shakespeare in the Ruins Rodrigo Beilfuss shared a heartfelt anecdote about the resilience of the theatre industry during these unprecedented times. Lara Rae, co-founder of the Winnipeg Comedy Festival, discussed the importance of arts, accessibility and community and the multitalented Laura Lussier performed her hosting duties — a land acknowledgement and the show closer — in both French and English.

This year’s ceremony looked a bit different from last year’s, and it’s not because of the online viewing platform. Due to the limited number of theatrical offerings since the pandemic began, there was only one juried award category — the outstanding digital production award, which went to the Prairie Theatre Exchange’s production of Hannah Moscovitch’s Post-Democracy. The Evies promise to return to their traditional categories in June 2022.

Toward the middle of the almost 75-minute broadcast was a sketch comedy routine, performed by local theatre company Echo Theatre. The sketch, titled Doorbell Shakespeare, was short, sweet and side-splitting, artfully fusing the sophisticated language of William Shakespeare with informal commentary on the worldwide pandemic situation.

The ceremony also featured an “In Memoriam” presentation to honour those the community has lost over the past season. One of these individuals was Chris Johnson, a former English, theatre, film and media professor at the University of Manitoba, who passed away suddenly in June. For his profound contribution to drama education — including the founding of the U of M’s Black Hole Theatre Company, now the John J. Conklin Theatre at the Gail Asper Performing Arts Hall — Johnson was the recipient of the honorary theatre educator award at the 2018 Evie Awards and went on to sit on the board of the awards as co-chair.

Despite a challenging time for the performing arts, theatre artists in Winnipeg and all over the world have been resiliently keeping the flame

provided Prairie Theatre Exchange / / photo

alive against all odds and they are ready to return with abandon, live and in person, when theatres reopen again.