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PEOPLE'S VOICE EDITORIALS: OCT. 1-15/2000
(These editorials are from the October 1-15/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
PROTEST THE HEALTHCARE SELLOUT
FAR FROM REVERSING the long term decline of Canada's healthcare system, last month's deal hammered out by the Prime Minister and provincial premiers opens the door wider to two-tier medical care. The fact that public pressure has forced Ottawa to restore some of the billions of dollars slashed since 1995 should not deter the labour and people's movements from keeping the heat on our politicians.
The first ministers' agreement ominously calls for unspecified "urgently needed reforms." This phrase is a veiled code for further privatization of medicare and new attacks on universality.
The agreement signals Ottawa's surrender of its key role, which has been to ensure that all Canadians have access to a not-for-profit, comprehensive, publicly administered healthcare system, regardless of which province they reside. In effect, the "no strings attached" deal means that Ralph Klein, Mike Harris, Lucien Bouchard and other premiers are free to decide how to spend the funds supposedly earmarked for medical care.
A number of people's organizations have called on the Liberals to clearly oppose further privatisation of the healthcare system, and to force all provinces to adhere to the conditions set out in the Canada Health Act. This demand should be raised loud and clear right across the country.
The Chretien government must not be allowed to head into an election campaign claiming credit for "saving medicare." This Liberal lie will be exposed by the October 28 Canada-wide day of protest against healthcare cuts initiated by the Quebec-based "S.O.S. Sante" movement. We urge readers to get more details of this important action and to help organize actions in as many cities and towns as possible on October 28th.
THE GENOCIDE AGAINST IRAQ
ON SEPT. 23, over 800 people jammed a Vancouver church hall for a public forum on the United Nations sanctions against Iraq. The huge turnout was to hear from Dennis Halliday, the UN bureaucrat who supervised the "Oil for Food" program in Iraq for a year, until he resigned in disgust in the fall of 1998.
Halliday's message was blunt, shocking, and clear. The United States and other major western powers want to maintain the status quo in Iraq, to dominate crucial oil supplies, and to keep selling vast amounts of arms to other countries in the Gulf region. For the sake of imperialist geopolitical interests and huge oil profits, the people of Iraq have been condemned to a humiliating genocide by slow starvation. UNICEF reports that 5,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 die as a result of the sanctions every month, and nobody disputes these or other similar estimates.
Halliday stressed that the UN economic sanctions do nothing to challenge Saddam Hussein's grip on power. While the US and Britain bomb Iraq nearly every day, democratic change in the country is virtually impossible. All indications are that once the economic sanctions are lifted and the situation in the country begins to normalize, the Iraqi people themselves will settle their own future without imperialist dictates.
One ray of hope in this tragedy is that the sanctions are being challenged by more people and governments around the planet. Recent increases in humanitarian aid and the resumption of some civilian flights to Baghdad are important steps in this direction. Canadians should tell our federal government to stop its shameful participation in this act of genocide immediately!
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