| Conflicts of interest mar the most recent Senate report on health care in Canada just as they did Alberta’s Mazankowski report earlier this year, say public health care proponents.
Alberta’s opposition politicians and public health care advocates say there are some good and bad recommendations in Sen. Michael Kirby’s report on health care in Canada, released in late October, but his position on the board of directors of one of North America’s largest private long-term care facilities casts the whole report into doubt.
Kirby made his position on Extendicare’s board known when the work on the report began nearly two years ago, and has since been cleared of conflicts by Canada’s ethics commissioner.
That means little to Alberta Liberal health critic Kevin Taft, who wrote a book on the dangers of private health care before becoming an MLA in 2001. He says the Kirby report is tarnished, as was the Alberta’s government’s health care report – its author, former MP Don Mazankowski, was involved with a private health care insurance company.
"Neither one has much credibility to me," Taft says. "Both Don Mazankowski and Michael Kirby are sitting on the boards of corporations that would profit from the dismantling of public health care."
Michael McBane, the national co-ordinator of the Canadian Health Co-oalition, a national organization supporting public health care, is calling for the resignation of Kirby from the committee writing the reports.
"It is unethical for public office holders to influence government actions that further their financial interests," McBane says. "Canadians know it is unwise to entrust the sick and the vulnerable to profit-seeking firms."
Both Taft and McBane are urging governments not to act on Kirby’s recommendations – which include a new tax to fund health care, the creation of an independent health commissioner and more private facilities that provide publicly funded services. They say the government should wait for the release of former Saskatchewan Premier Ray Romanow’s report on health care, which was initiated by the prime minister and is likely to be released in late November.
Kirby, however, denies the conflict of interest. In a letter to federal ethics commissioner Howard Wilson last year, he says he took steps to avoid such accusations even though he wasn’t required to do so.
"I recognized that there was a danger that if people did not like some of the options or recommendations put forward by the committee, they would try to discredit them by attacking the messenger, rather than engaging in a debate about the issues," Kirby said.
Wilson agreed that no conflict existed, saying Kirby’s committee was simply inquiring about health care, as opposed to drafting legislation, so he couldn’t benefit by sitting on Extendicare’s board. |
