Star Readers Are Not Impressed

Star readers can spot a corrupt policy process when they see one, an acuity they make known as they opine on Bill Morneau's pharmacare plans:

Morneau’s unwise decision to backtrack pharmacare, Walkom, March 2

Every parent knows this: If you aren’t really going to take your kids to the zoo, don’t mention it at all.

When we heard details included in the Liberal’s budget this week, we were delighted. That evening’s conversation around our dining-room table with our adult children was animated and optimistic. One of the most exciting elements in the budget was the announcement of the government’s commitment to pharmacare.

Then, came Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s near-immediate dialing back: not a “plan” exactly, more of a “strategy,” and other weasely sounding words. What a colossal disappointment.

I reluctantly excused the Liberal’s backtrack from their promise to reform our electoral system. Please don’t let the pharmacare “promise” go the same way. We need to hear their clarification and recommitment — and soon. Just be straight with us. Are we going to the zoo or aren’t we?

Jeannie Mackintosh, St. Catherines, Ont.

I was even encouraged by the enlistment of former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins, whose provincial government recently implemented a long-overdue pharmacare program, albeit one only covering residents under age 25. It was a start and I hoped that coverage would increase eventually to provide coverage for all.

My feelings of elation and hope were soon dashed when Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced it wouldn’t be universal but would amount to a patchwork of coverage, with some people included in the government plan and others not.

This is unacceptable. We don’t need some mish-mash of a program. Let’s do it right and make a universal plan and, as the research indicated, the overall cost to health care should see a reduction. Perhaps Australia’s government could advise how best to meet this goal.

Norah Downey, Midland, Ont.

Drug-policy experts were stunned. Canada is the only advanced country with a medicare system that lacks pharmacare. Canadians spend so much on drugs because we don’t have a pharmacare program: drug prices are too high and too many intermediaries like insurance companies and benefit consultants drain money from the system.

Morneau’s approach would leave all that waste in place. The obstacle is that every dollar wasted is somebody’s income and the affected industries — drug manufacturers, drug insurers and drug benefits managers — fight back.

The minister effectively pointed to a potential conflict of interest and then restricted the mandate of the advisory council. I hope the minister will step back and let the council do its work.

Kim Jarvi, Toronto

The Neoliberal Creep - An Update

I'm not sure what I find more offensive. Is it the fact that Bill Morneau, despite all that he has said about his limited vision regarding pharmacare, is apparently lying when he now says he is open to all ideas regarding a national drug-coverage program? Or is it that he holds the Canadian people in such contempt that he thinks we are either too stupid or too inattentive to see through his dissembling?

Finance Minister Bill Morneau now says he’s “agnostic” on proposals for a pharmacare plan after criticism that he was trying to dial back ambitions for a new program to ensure Canadians get the prescription drugs they need.

Morneau said Friday that he’s not seeking to prejudge the outcome of a newly created advisory council that will be looking at the idea or dampen the scope of their recommendations.

“What’s really clear to us is we need to get expert advice on how to do this best,” Morneau said during a visit to Montreal to discuss the budget measures.

What might account for his faux 'come to Jesus' reversal? Could it be that he has outraged influential groups?

... the Canadian Federation of Nurses, Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the Canadian Labour Congress [have written] an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanding Morneau be removed from the file.

They said Morneau has already decided it will not be a universal “plan” that covers all workers — to the detriment of Canadians, and the benefit of insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and, they suggested, Morneau Shepell.

They said it contradicts “overwhelming evidence” on the need for a universal program and undermines the work of Hoskins’ council before it begins.

“It is our hope that insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry interests will not play a role in the implementation of universal public pharmacare,” the letter to Trudeau stated.

Some will say we should not prejudge the process, and that we must give Morneau and his team a chance to get things right. To take such a position, in my view, would be to harbor a political naivete that I am incapable of.

More realistic, to me, is to see the truth of this entire charade, the truth made known when Mr. Morneau, in a moment of carelessness, let his mask slip, revealing what lies beneath - a living, breathing, neoliberal creep.

The Neoliberal Creep

The above title epitomizes both the direction of the entire Trudeau government and the character of specific high-profile individuals within it, most notably Finance Minister Bill Morneau and International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau. The latter two are using their offices, not to promote the public good, but to do the bidding of their corporate masters.



Let's start with Morneau and what has to be one of the most rapid turnarounds/reversals I have ever witnessed in politics. On Monday, I was delighted to learn that Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins had resigned his post to head an Ottawa study into pharmacare, a universal program covering drug costs for all, a feature of all countries with universal health care save Canada. Then, less than two days later, Morneau 'clarified' his intention (doubtless after hearing from the pharmaceutical and private insurance companies) that

a new national pharmacare program will be "fiscally responsible" and designed to fill in gaps, not provide prescription drugs for Canadians already covered by existing plans.

Why the walkback/misdirection? Well, part of the allure of real pharmacare is the fact that bulk-buying of drugs means massive savings. This, however, does not sit well with the powerful pharmaceutical industry.

Traditionally, they have threatened to stop manufacturing drugs in jurisdictions that engage aggressively in bulk buying.

Consequently, Morneau is now facing conflict of interest accusations on the pharmacare file.

The Canadian Federation of Nurses, Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the Canadian Labour Congress wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanding Morneau be removed from the file.

They said he has already decided it will not be a universal “plan” that covers all workers, merely a “strategy” to fill in the gaps for those who currently don’t have coverage — to the detriment of Canadians, and the benefit of insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and, they suggested, Morneau Shepell.

They said it contradicts “overwhelming evidence” on the need for a universal program and undermines the work of Hoskins’ council before it begins.


“It is our hope that insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry interests will not play a role in the implementation of universal public pharmacare,” the letter to Trudeau states.

Moneau's cowardice has earned the scorn of The Toronto Star:

...the projected savings that have made comprehensive drug coverage such a popular proposal in policy circles depend in large part upon the program’s universality. Most of the savings created by a pharmacare program would be achieved through the bulk-buying of drugs and the elimination of bureaucracies – potential benefits at least partly forgone by the sort of means-tested approach that Morneau is hinting at.

Morneau doesn’t really mean “fiscally responsible.” He means politically palatable. With no plan to return to a balanced budget, the finance minister wants nothing to do with the inevitable initial costs of such a project, even if avoiding these means forgoing enormous long-term savings.

Increasingly, the Trudeau government is proving itself to be a massive disappointment to progressives in Canada who, unlike some, demand substance, not just the vapid photo-ops that are coming to define this government.

In Part 2, I will look at International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau's plans to cut the private sector in for a piece of the foreign aid action.

Ezra Schemes And Dreams

I would say that Ezra Levant should be careful about the company he keeps, but I doubt that there is more that can bring down his reputation other than simply being Ezra.

The merchant of malice and division, repugnant to the morally sane, has launched a new scheme to keep his rapidly-sinking Rebel Media afloat, a suspect retirement savings fund.

After struggling through rocky times in 2017, Levant is apparently now looking to diversify Rebel Media’s revenue streams, teaming up with an Alberta-based wealth management firm to offer Levant’s aging viewers the opportunity to stash their nest eggs in an alt-right website.

“The fund is directed at investors seeking to save for retirement or in retirement that desire modest, regular, steady income,” reads an information sheet promoting the fund. The sheet also notes the Rebel Freedom Fund is a match made in heaven for those looking for “both a financial and ideologically based investment.”

For those of sufficiently-strong constitution, here is a promotional video for the fund, led by Dale Wells:


Interesting the company that Ezra keeps. Consider Mr. Wells himself.

On the firm’s website, Wells says “we don’t invest traditionally,” explaining the firm focuses on “one-on-one” investments like financing movies and mortgages instead of mutual funds because the markets are “manipulated” – “I don’t want to say corruption,” Wells cautions, even though “I might feel that.”

“There’s no standard of acceptable practices or accounting or anything that you could follow along anymore because it’s all manipulated,” he adds.

That Mr. Wells believes that there is "no standard of acceptable practices or accounting" is evidenced by his own checkered past.

According to Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada records, Wells was disciplined by the regulators in 2011 for “business conduct unbecoming to the public interest” when he “acted in the role of an advisor without being registered as one.”

Specifically, the panel found that Mr. Wells committed a violation by entering into an arrangement to supply a financial services company with his own computer-generated research that recommended buy and sell opportunities related to mutual funds in return for a fee, and that this information was used regularly by that firm to make trades in an investment fund. In doing so, Mr. Wells acted as an advisor within the meaning of the Alberta Securities Act without being registered as such, contrary to IIROC Rule 29.1.

In its decision, the panel reviewed the requirements to be registered as an advisor under Alberta Securities law, and concluded "the evidence clearly established that the Respondent [Mr. Wells] held none of these qualifications."

As a consequence, Wells was levied a $25,000 fine and received

a three (3) year prohibition from conducting securities related business in any capacity while in the employ of, or associated with any Member of the MFDA, effective from August 1, 2014 to July 31, 2017.

Newly-freed from that ban, it appears that Wells may be up to his old habits, given his pairing up with that malevolent trickster Levant.

That the benighted might wish to risk some of their cash on this scheme is of no consequence or concern to me. What this episode does serve to illustrate, however, is the demographic that is being targeted, the same one, of course, that supports Levant's reactionary rants, mistruths, and distortions: the stupid, the gullible, and the sorely ill-educated.

It is almost enough to make this retired teacher despair at education's obvious failings.

Who Speaks For The People?

The NRA's Dana Loesch?



Or Parkland student Delaney Tarr?



You decide.

A Dying Cause

As a reasonably rational individual, I no longer look upon the ongoing cascade of gun massacres in the United States with either horror or sadness; the only real emotion I have left for that country is profound disgust. How else can it be viewed when it puts some mythically-infused Second Amendment rights above the safety and lives of its children?

Despite its hubristic clamour about being "the greatest country on earth," in my mind the U.S. is but an abjectly failed nation.

Even the latest tragedy, which saw 17 children and teachers murdered in Parkland, Florida, has left the NRA unbowed.

The head of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, leveled a searing indictment on Thursday against liberal Democrats, the news media and political opportunists he said were joined together in a socialist plot to “eradicate all individual freedoms.”

Wayne LaPierre can rail all he wants about elites who don't care about American schools. What is important, however, is that finally, real pushback is being exercised. There is, of course, the valiant and passionate efforts of American students who are all too often the victims of NRA-induced gun madness. But add to that the fact that many national business are starting to take something of a stand, which I would call a good but modest start, against the NRA.

It began with a Twitter announcement by First National Bank of Omaha:

Customer feedback has caused us to review our relationship with the NRA. As a result, First National Bank of Omaha will not renew its contract with the National Rifle Association to issue the NRA Visa Card.

That was followed by

car rental company Enterprise (which also owns Alamo and National) announc[ing] they would no longer be offering discounts to NRA members.

The pressure and the momentum are building:

These companies have partnerships with the NRA. Demand they #RejectTheNRA. #BoycottNRA pic.twitter.com/EyrltUEHgq

— CAP Action (@CAPAction) February 23, 2018

Subsequently, more companies have severed their ties with the merchants of death:

Both Allied Van Lines and North American Van Lines, moving companies operated by the same parent company, offered unspecified discounts for NRA members. On Friday, the parent company announced those benefits would be ending.

That has been followed by Insurer Chubb Ltd, Avis and Hertz car rentals and Symantec. As well, both Delta and United Airlines are ending their discounts to the annual gun-toters' convention. The Best Western hotel chain has done the same. I'm sure more will follow.

However, given the deeply-ingrained nature of American gun madness, it would be simplistic to think that success in bringing about even a modicum of sanity to gun laws is assured. Consider the NRA's reaction to this corporate hand-washing:

In a statement released Saturday afternoon, the group accused companies of “a shameful display of political and civic cowardice.”

“Let it be absolutely clear. The loss of a discount will neither scare nor distract one single NRA member from our mission to stand and defend the individual freedoms that have always made America the greatest nation in the world.”

Fanaticism has always been a force difficult to tame, let alone defeat. It will take more than passionate students and corporations that have recently grown a conscience. It will take the collective goodwill and rationality that I'm sure still resides in parts of the Unted States.

The question remains to be answered, however, is whether even all of these forces combined will be enough to defeat the powers of darkness epitomized by the National Rifle Association.

Crowdsourcing, Anyone?

Like millions of people around the world, I have been deeply impressed and moved by the passionate conviction with which young people, spearheaded by the survivors of the horrific shootings in Parkland, Florida, are organizing and demonstrating to bring some sanity to the gun laws of the United States. Their biggest obstacle, of course, are the politicians bought and paid for by the NRA.

Today's Star has a flurry of letters about the national obsession that has resulted in far too many unnecessary deaths. To my mind, the best suggestion for remediation comes from Scott Heaslip, of Stouffville, who writes:

I have a suggestion for the young people concerned that their elected officials refuse to support effective gun control measures. They should crowd source a fund to hire a team of lawyers and private investigators to look into the backgrounds and business activities of those elected officials who are more interested in the continued support of the National Rifle Association than protecting the lives of their fellow citizens. These officials may then develop the backbone to do the right thing.

That is the kind of campaign many, many people, I'm certain, would be happy to get behind.