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Canada Health Act "Dusty Old Rule Book" That Has No Relevance:Klein

Posted on: Saturday, 9 April 2005, 00:00 CDT

EDMONTON (CP) - The Canada Health Act is part of a "dusty old rule book" that has lost its relevance to modern health care, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein said Friday.

Speaking to delegates at the provincial Progressive Conservative convention, Klein repeated his pledge to forge ahead with a "third way" for medicare - not a private, U.S.-style system but maybe not totally public either.

"We are tuning out the federal bureaucrats who only have three answers: No, Stop, and Forget It," he said.

"In Alberta, we are doing things every day in our hospitals and clinics and labs that may or may not fall within some dusty old rule book, but it doesn't matter any more. The third way is not about rules. It's about getting the health care you need, where you need it, quickly, efficiently and safely."

One of the principles of the Canada Health Act, the law that governs medicare, is that health care must be delivered on a non-profit basis by a public authority. Provinces that break the act risk losing federal health dollars.

"We're prepared, if it makes sense, to weigh the costs of the Canada health transfers against the cost of doing something that might be in violation of the Canada Health Act," Klein told reporters. "But that remains to be seen."

Albertans will know exactly how the government plans to reform health care by the end of the year, he said - after an international symposium of health experts in May and public consultations in the fall.

Other Canadians will soon see things his way, Klein suggested.

"When they see that education suffers, infrastructure suffers and other programs suffer because of the rising cost of health care, then they'll come to the realization that something needs to be done. Premiers and health ministers across this country have already come to that realization."

Klein, who has said he's serving his last term, insisted he plans to stick around long enough to implement the health reforms. He assured the 1,500 delegates he'll be around for another 3 1/2 years.

That's despite the fact that the race among his would-be successors has heated up dramatically at the Tory convention. Two former cabinet ministers and three current ones have said they plan to run for the party leadership. Former treasurer Jim Dinning, considered the front-runner, chose Friday to launch his campaign website.

Klein asked the leadership candidates to "cool their jets" and advised delegates to leave the issue for next year, when a leadership review is scheduled.

The premier met Thursday with about 30 members of his 62-member caucus who urged him to stay on, and several of them spoke for members who weren't there.

"They were saying to me that they have been lobbied by various leadership aspirants to come into their camp, and they wanted to let me know personally that they were still behind me and they were not interested in backing any leadership candidate at this time," he said.

The support was gratifying, he said, because "I don't want to be perceived as a lame-duck premier."

Source: Canadian Press

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