For those of you who read a few posts ago, you are aware that I am doing a project on the Canadian Health Care system. Today, while I was reading some articles about the current situation, there seemed to be a lot of concern about the aging population and a reduced number of people in the work force. And I thought, feel free to disagree with me, that perhaps one way to help the situation (albeit a long term way) is to encourage people to have more children. That way there will eventually be a wider range of worker from whom the government can tax to help fund services such as health care.
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While I still haven’t been able to get an answer from Health Canada about the new formula for giving out the money to the provinces, due to lack of time on my part—I intend to try again tomorrow, I decided to see if I could find any information about the Canadian Health Care from the federal government. And I discovered that it actually came up during the talks yesterday, although very briefly. Although it was brief (only two people talked about it) it did give me another question.
The Minister of Health Leona Aglukkaq was talking about the amount of funding that the provinces were going to be receiving for health care. While she was speaking she voiced her opinion that the provinces should “stop griping and take the money and get to work reforming the system,” because the “long-term stable funding arrangements… will see transfers reach historic levels of $40 billion at the end of the decade.” Now this statement leads to my question: if the amount of money going to the provinces for health care is going up to “historic levels,” then how come almost every province (with the exception of Alberta) is complaining that the amount of money they are getting is going down? This doesn’t make sense to me. Perhaps if I was ever to find out how the funding is being distributed I could learn how something can go both up and down at the same time, but as of right now, I don’t have a clue.
What about you? Do you see how that works?
According to the Collins English Dictionary hope is “a feeling or desire for something and confidence in the possibility of its fulfilment.” Now what does that have to do with my pictures of a frozen bicycle? Well, since before Christmas I have been waiting and hoping patiently for winter to come. For the longest time it hadn’t, but I kept hoping for snow. Slowly I was being to force myself to come to terms with the fact that it just wasn’t going to happen this year, and it would be just a really long, really boring, really ugly gap between the colours of autumn and the new birth of spring. And then, it came! I feel like these images capture that because they have elements of both the spring/summer and winter in them, because of the bike and the ice.
For one of my classes, I have been asked to engage in some citizen journalism, and then record my experiences with it. So the topic I choose to delve into deeper was the changes to the Canadian Health Care. This is the fourth week of my classes and so ideally I should have a blog post up by now. This one wasn’t supposed to be the first post. This one wasn’t supposed to exist.
The post I wanted to write was about something I saw in an article on the 19th of January that made me curious. The article was “The Politics of the 2014 Health Accord in Victora” by Adrienne Silnicki and what she said that I was curious about was that when the Canada Health Act was first signed “they [the provinces] were told they’d have a 50-50 sharing arrangement with the federal government.” It hasn’t been that way, but the funding arrangement was what got my attention. So I looked up the Canada Health Act to try and learn more. It didn’t mention too much about finances because that’s covered in the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act.
Here is where things started to get fun. Section 24.1 talks about the amount of money the provinces are going to get until March 31st, 2014. Which is pretty self-explanatory, and it has the 6% increase that people are upset about losing. But it also says this in subparagraph (b):
the portion of the total equalized tax transfer for all provinces that is determined by multiplying the total equalized tax transfer for all provinces by the quotient [population of the province for the fiscal year by the total population of all the provinces for the fiscal year], rounded to the nearest hundredth, that is obtained by dividing an amount equal to the cash contribution specified in subparagraph (a)(i) by an amount equal to the aggregate of the cash contributions specified in subparagraphs (a)(i) and 24.4(1)(a)(i).
Which is fine, but not really what I was looking for since this is before the change is happening. So I kept reading. And I found the information about after March 31st, 2014, which was very exciting. The only problem was, in my opinion, what it says is the same as what the paragraph above says. Now that can’t be right, because otherwise people would not be so upset about it. So I decided to look into it further.
I called my MPs office (this was on the 23th), because this is a change that the Federal Government is making so I assumed that surely he (or someone in his office) could answer my question. I was informed that they wouldn’t be able to, but that Health Canada recently released a news release about that topic, so I should look on their website. I looked, but I couldn’t find the news release (I still can’t find it). I’ve been looking. But I figure, originally, that maybe they only verbally released it and so it wasn’t on their page yet. And so I called.
My call was answered by someone in General Inquiries. I explained the situation in the Act that confused me and asked what the difference was between how the funding is being decided pre-March 31st 2014 and post-March 31st 2014. I was informed that I was in the wrong division and I needed to speak to someone in the Media Inquiries division. I said “okay” and she transferred me over there. After a lady at that end picked up I explained my situation again. She told me that she would need to call me back, and asked which media outlet I am with. I am not with one and told her so. Well that was not acceptable. And she curtly informed me that they only deal with the media and I was not supposed to call that extension. I needed to go and talk to General Inquiries. So I explained that General Inquiries had transferred me to her. Well, apparently they shouldn’t have. But instead of hanging up on me, she decided that since this wasn’t entirely my fault, she would transfer me back.
So, while I was on hold I decided to make sure that the next person who picked up the phone knew I wasn’t with the media. So when the gentleman picked up, I started with that explaination. And then I went into my spiel, and was informed that I needed to talk to Media Inquiries, which led to a rather confusing conversation about my not being part of the media, and due to this fact Media Inquires won’t speak with me. After that was cleared up, he transferred me to someone in the Health Care Policy Directorate. She wasn’t there, so I left a message.
Much to my surprise I got a call back on Wednesda. Unfortunately, I was in class and was unable to answer her call. I called her back on Thursday morning. I explained what I was trying to find out, and she informed that I was in the wrong place and told me to call General Inquiries. So I informed her that they transferred me to her, which confused her, but told me to try them again anyway. And she said that if they didn’t send me in the right direction to call her back and she’ll try to see if she can. I haven’t had a chance to do this yet, so I’m not giving up on my question being answered, but this is annoying.
This time I thought I would be smart. Before I called General Inquiries, I looked up the different departments. I found the Chief Financial Officer Branch, which is the higher body of many smaller parts, but since they have “the departmental focal point of accountability to ensure rigorous stewardship of resources and managing results” I figured someone in that Branch could answer my question. Unfortunately, unless you already know the number, you have to call General Inquiries to get there. But I figured that this was still a step in the right direction, apparently not.
When I called this time I asked the lady who answered to transfer me to someone within that Branch, and she asked why. So I told her, and she told me that I didn’t want that Branch, and gave me the number to call. While I was writing down the number I thought “this looks familiar.” So I asked her where it was going: the Health Care Policy Directorate. So I told her that I spoke to that lady earlier today and she informed me that I was in the wrong place, which was why I looked up where I wanted to go. So she told me to look on the website, which I was, and she tried to talk me through finding what I wanted to find. But after she found it the first time, it disappeared. So she said she would email it to me instead. So I gave her my email, thanked her and hung up.
After that I was busy with other school things for the rest of the week so I didn’t have a chance to check my email until today. And while I really appreciate the fact that she did email me some information, it’s not the right information. I learned some things about the history of the health care system in Canada, but that’s not what I am looking for. On Monday, I’m going to try again. I think I’ll call the lady from the Policy Directorate back and see if she will transfer me to the correct person, but in the mean time, if any of you know where I can find the answer to my question or know the answer to my question or even the best way to phrase my question so they understand what I mean, I would really appreciate it.
Peaceful: Playing with my zebras and staring into my flowers.
This is a random toy that I have lying around in my house.
If you look closely, you can see the pink streak that is it leaving the ground.
Apparently I flinch easily.
Safely back on the ground.
Safely enough to entice the kitty over.
My cat really enjoys trying to catch it after it’s launched into the air, but sometimes he gets bored of waiting for it to go and starts poking it, which he’s sort of learnt isn’t a good idea.
In today’s National Post there was an article about the abortion debate titled “The debate that isn’t.” And at the very end of the article it mentions some bills that have been brought up in the past few years such as the one in 2008 that “would have made it a criminal offence for someone to attack a woman with the intent of killing her unborn child. [This] proposed law explicitly did not apply to abortion doctors, nor did it seek to change the definition of personhood” (Lewis, 2012, A6). The “Unborn Victims of Crime Act” (Bill C-484) was proposed by then-Tory MP Ken Epp in what could have been considered a response to cases where a pregnant woman was killed by her male partner (Authur, 2008). In her commentary on this bill, Joyce Authur (2008) explains that while the death of the fetus is tragic and the victims’ families should be sympathized with, the main problem is not that these women were killed because they were pregnant; it is that they were killed. And regardless of the reason for their murder, it is domestic abuse. And Authur (2008) points out that the best way to protect a child is to protect their mother, and provide them with the care they need.
More recently, a law (Bill C-510) was proposed by MP Rod Bruinooge that “would criminalize coercing a woman into an abortion through threats of violence, withdrawal of financial resources or a place to live” (Lewis, 2012, A6). To me, this seems like a great idea. And I wondered when I read it, why this one would die, especially considering it promotes the ability of a woman to choose whether or not to keep her child. Then I thought “isn’t that blackmail? Isn’t blackmail illegal?” So I decided to look it up, and I discovered that blackmail is actually called extortion, which is committed when someone “without reasonable justification or excuse and with intent to obtain anything, by threats, accusation, menaces or violence induces or attempts to induce any person, whether or not he is the person threatened, accused or menaced or to whom any violence is shown, to do anything or cause anything to be done” (Dukelow, 2006). Furthermore, in R v Davis (1999), Chief Justice Iamer of Canada’s Supreme Court wrote that “Extortion criminalizes intimidation and interferences with freedom of choice. It punishes those who, through threats, accusations, menaces, or violence induce or attempt to induce their victims into doing anything or causing anything to be done. Threats, accusations, menaces and violence clearly intimidate. When threats are coupled with demands, there is an inducement to accede to the demands. This interferes with the victim’s freedom of choice, as the victim may be coerced into doing something he or she would otherwise have chosen not to do.” After learning that, it makes more sense to me that Bill C-510 would be rejected, because forcing a woman to have an abortion against her will through the means listed in the bill is in fact already illegal. So once again, the best way for those who are pro-life to ensure the safety of the fetus is to do what Authur suggested and make sure that the pregnant mother has access to the resources that she needs.
References
Authur, J. (2008). The case against a “fetal homicide” law. Retrieved January 7, 2012, from the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada Website: http://www.arcc-cdac.ca/fetal_homicide_law.html
Dukelow, D. (2006). Pocket dictionary of Canadian law (4th ed.). Toronto: Thomson Carswell.
Lewis, C. (2012, January 7). The debate that isn’t. National Post. p. A1 & A6.
R v Davis. (1999) 3 SCR 759. Retrieved January 7, 2012 from Duhaime.org: http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/E/Extortion.aspx
This is how my husband and I are celebrating the end of the semester: champagne and chocolate.
For my last project in my new media class we had to create a video and upload it to either youtube or vimeo. Now because I’m not savvy with video I thought I would do something simple. And so I made a video of me making chocolate truffles for Christmas.
I am so glad I am done filming and editing this video. It has caused me nothing but stress and technical problems since I started. But it worked and so that’s the main thing.
I hope you enjoy it.
I think this calendar pretty much captures everything that I am waiting for right now: Christmas, the last of the pink sticky notes to be ripped off the calendar (which signals the end of the semester), and the day we go home to our parents’ houses circled in anticipation.
What about the rest of you? What are you waiting for?
