Canadian election

[Skandranon]

It's very simple.  Open up medical services to the private sphere and, under NAFTA, it officially becomes illegal to place restrictions on who can deliver them. 

Actually, that's not quite true. Health care and its delivery are protected under a negotiated addition to the Schedule to Annex II of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Roy Romanow, after his health care report, concluded that Canada's system, "with its mix of not-for-profit and private sector delivery mechanisms" is safe from challenge under NAFTA's national treatment laws. The danger point is if we increase the role of private corporations from providing delivery to providing private insurance, which clearly we aren't going to do.

As long as health care delivery in this country has a single payer and single administrator, i.e. the government, NAFTA can't be invoked to do anything. Our health care has had some private delivery in some areas for some time now, and people have been screaming that NAFTA will be used to invade our system for just about that long. Hasn't happened yet. Now, either NAFTA can be used to do that and they haven't done it yet - in which case the transition hardly follows from Harper's statement - or it can't be used to do it and that's why they haven't done it.

Either way there's no need for overblown fears about the security of the Canadian state and values based on the possibility of exploring alternate delivery methods.