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A CS PORT PERRY "WEEKEND STAR" / FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 2000-29 Ontarians getting sizzle -no st Premier Mike Harris caused the frivolous spending of over $6 million in media ad campaigns trying to goad the federal government into petty bickering over health care. | And yet the provincial legislature just began sitting Monday, the first time since before Christmas. That's some commitment to health care. The wasted $6 million could have been spent on health care, the down time at Queen's Park could have been used to discuss the issue with the people of Ontario. But no, he'd rather give Ontarians sizzle instead of steak. p One of the issues involved in health care spending is that of tax points. I know this solicits a big yawn but tax points have to be addressed when trying to understand which level of government spends what. In 1977 the provinces - including Ontario - and the federal government entered into an agreement whereby the federal government rented to the provinces tax room to generate more revenue for health and other social spending. For example, prior to the agreement, if you paid a total of $1,305 in taxes, $1,000 would have gone to the federal government and $305 to the province. After the agreement the allocation was $908 to the feds and $396 to the provinces. The math is simple, $92 was transferred from the federal treasury to the provin- cial. ; Over the years, as revenue has increased, so has the provincial component. So much so that by 1999 the tax points amount to 17 cents out of every health care dollar spent. If you take this 17 cents (tax points), add another 12 cents, the cash component the federal government gives through the Canada Health and Social Transfer, plus another four cents in federal direct payments, the total is 33 cents of every health dollar spent in Ontario comes from the federal government. | ~ This is the way both levels of government planned health care spending and the tax points was part of the agreement which Ontario entered into. Mike Harris chooses to ignore this fact, as if Ontario never attended the historic meeting that gave birth to the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements and Established Programs Financing Act. This is revisionism by Queen's Park and it's costing you tax dollars unnec- essarily. ; Canada is one of the highest spenders on health care in the world. If problems in health care could be solved by simply spending money wouldn't we have solved those problems yearsago? - ©. By diminishing the role of the federal government in maintaining health care standards, and relegating his argument to simply money, Harris insults our intelligence. He illustrates the stark reality that he hasn't figured out how to deal with the health care problems in Ontario. It's easy to close hospitals, reduce spending and then turn around and give Ontarians tax reductions even tough Harris continues to borrow money and run provincial deficits. eak - on health care - medical technologies, develop workable home care sys- y But you have to think to put a plan in place to deal with acute care, primary care, home care, prevention, doctors and health care infrastructure. He hasn't done that. This is why the federal government says no more money until we see a plan for improving the system. The definition of health care, as most people think of it, is likely to involve both government and private sector. Drugs, chiropractic medicine, homeopathic medicine and dental care are likely things people think of as included in health but all have a private component. Nursing, doctors and hospitals are something else and clearly the preference is to keep this in the public domain. Access to these services must not depend on how much money you have. As | see it, people have a fundamental right to these services by virtue of being a Canadian. Therefore, the policies of Mike Harris and Ralph Klein have to be resisted. The federal government's role is clear. It funds health care through direct cash transfers and a combination of tax points and equalization payments. : The federal government must also move to improve tems, deal effectively with acute care all within its ability topay. . TL The federal government must ensure harmonization of these programs across Canada maintaining the stan- dards Canadians have come to expect. = Diminishing the role of the federal government, spending the taxpayer's money needlessly on untruthful ad campaigns to generate public squabbles is not going | to make the sick well, shorten lines in emergency rooms or establish trust between citizens and government. People in Durham know this. Time off from legislature wasn't just a vacation for LETTER The Provincial Legislature returned this week. It is my understanding that we will be working on legislation like Christopher's Law (sexual offender registry), Parental Responsibility Act, the Code of Conduct, the Franchise Disclosure Act, the Technical Standards and Safety Act and, of course, the Spring Budget expected in early May. The media often paints a picture of members not working when the Legislature isn't in session. The truth of the matter is that working away from Queen's Park is perhaps one of the most important and productive times for an MPP. Over the past three months, | have met with many constituents and organizations. Some of those groups include hospital boards, as well as nurses and doctors, school boards, in addition to teachers and stu- dents, farm organizations, municipal councils, truckers and any organization that requested to meet with me. I have toured the province on three different occasions with the Gas Price Review Task Force and other committees and have met with civil servants and elected officials from bther provinces. | don't want to get into the debate about preparation time. | understand that this job requires much more than just House Duty and | might also add that we do have a "perfor- mance evaluation" every four to five years. Last week, our Minister of Education, the Honourable Janet Ecker, announced that literacy testing for Grade 10 is scheduled to begin in the 2000-01 school year. Following this, in 2001-02, the literacy test will become a compulsory diplo- ma requirement, Figures released by the International Adult Literacy Survey, published by Statistics Canada and the organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1995, found that 20 per cent of adults in Qntario do not have basic literacy skills. The report also revealed that an additional 24 per cent would benefit from literacy upgrading. busy MPPs. JOHN R. O'TOOLI \7838 Sa D180 235 VN" 8 OY. NH In recent months, our government has announced $25 million in funding to provide extra help with reading and math for students in Grades 7 to 10. In addition, our government will be providing $64 million to expand the teacher- advisor program. : This week, many households will be receiving a flyer from the Ministry of Health and Long- Term Care talking about health care in Ontario. | _ believe that everyone needs to understand the enormous demands on our health care system and that life expectancy rates have increased for our aging population. We as Ontarians, and indeed as Canadians, define ourselves through our accessible health care system. However, the original founding principle of the Canada Health Act was a shared "50-50" part- nership between the provinces and our federal government in Ottawa. The federal government has not maintained their end of the bargain. This past weekend, provincial health ministers met with Federal Health Minister Allan Rock to discuss the future of Canada's health care system. Someone has to hold eur politicians in Ottawa accountable for cuts in provincial transfer pay- ments. As always, if you have any questions or com- ments that you would like to share, please call me at my constituency office, 697-1501 or 1-800- 661-2433. To the Editor: In his column, Straight Talk, (Weekend Star, March 24), MP Alex Shepherd attempted some very fancy footwork around the issue of whether or not Jean Chretien should step down from his post as prime minister whilst voicing his own support for a possible successor in the per- son of Paul Martin. A way of preventing prime ministers from staying on when past their "best before date," says Shepherd, would be for us to have a law which limited a prime minister to two terms, like America, for instance. To compare the American president, with his enormous executive powers, to our prime minister who is, or shouid be, first among equals, shows that Shepherd misunderstands the system he serves, or that he ig simply being mischievous. The fact is, no matter how bad a prime minister is, there is a limit to the amount of dam- age he could do in the country under our parliamentary system. We could, in fact, have Ghengis Khan for prime minis- ter, and the only real change in our lives would be that fathers would keep their daughters in nights. Surely, if all Shepherd wants to do is to make sure that polit- ical leaders do not outstay their welcome, then the appropriate way is to amend his own party's constitution to reflect that rule. After all, it is the party which stands to suffer the most when its leader sticks around too long. We voters have our own mechanism called an election which we use to remove politi- cians who get us mad. Just ask Trudeau, Mulroney, Peterson or Rae if you don't believe me. Though I'm certain that Shepherd will not appreciate advice from me, I'm going to give it anyway; time is of the essence, so the Liberals should get rid of Chretien by whatever means. When they've done so, they should change their con- stitution to put a curb on any future megalomaniacs. That would be far simpler and far loss inclined to anger voters than thrusting the country into years of constitutronal tur- moil that would result from attempting to change pur elec- toral system. To help focus his attention, Shepherd would doi well to «' Leave the PM to the voters, Mr. Shepherd remember that his patty has a majority of only five seats, and that to anger the voters at this stage would be most unwise. Bernie Gotham, Bowmanville os