For about a week, along with hundreds of thousands of people all over the world, I have been keeping an online vigil for 95-year-old Harry Leslie Smith.
Harry had been battling pneumonia in a hospital in Belleville, Ontario.
He fought bravely, but early this morning that battle finally ended.
But what a life it was.
Well there was Stephen Harper in Quebec yesterday, locking a promise never to raise taxes into a giant safe.
Vowing to put a tax lock on our future.
Stephen Harper is making a promise to keep his promise.
A re-elected Conservative government would introduce so-called “tax lock” legislation that would prohibit increases to federal tax rates, Harper announced Friday.
The gesture is a symbolic one, enshrining in law what Harper has already repeatedly promised and allowing him to say other parties — should they form future governments — would have to break the law in order to raise taxes.
And while some wondered whether he got the idea from a Saturday Night Live skit.
Over the years I have written dozens and dozens of posts about the way Stephen Harper is planning to slowly strangle our precious medicare system.
This one being the latest.
And the reason I have is because NOTHING he is doing bothers me more. For it would cause mass misery, and be the end of the Canadian dream.
So I'm really glad to see that people like Linda McQuaig are also raising the alarm.
In the aftermath of the SARS crisis of 2003, the government created the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the position of Chief Public Health Officer to strengthen this country's medical defences.
After they were shown to be almost catastrophically inadequate.
But now Stephen Harper and his Cons are slashing the Public Health Agency's budget, and neutering the country's top doctor.
And to make matters even worse, they're not even listening to them. They're all but burying their reports.
He's been slowly killing medicare in his usual creepy stealthy way. Nibble nibble, gnaw, gnaw.
Killing it with neglect, and preparing to bleed it dry.
So most of it can be privatized, just like the Cons in Britain are doing to that country's National Health Service. The magnificent system that inspired our own.
And most dangerously of all he has done absolutely nothing to help prepare our health system for the increasing influx of aging baby boomers.
And is setting the stage for an absolute nightmare of unnecessary human suffering.
So I'm really glad to see that the new president of the Canadian Medical Association is finally taking aim at Stephen Harper's criminally irresponsible inaction.
It's been less than two months since the Cons let the Canada Health Accord expire. And the corpse is still warm.
But I see that Stephen Harper is in a hurry, and has given the order to begin the second phase of his plan to kill medicare.
It was good to see Canadians out in the streets across the country today, sending a loud message to Stephen Harper:
Take your grubby paws off our medicare system.
On the day the Canada Health Accord died.
On Monday the Health Accord between the provinces and the federal government will expire.
There will be no longer be a signed agreement to enforce the five principles of the Canada Health Act.
The Health Council of Canada, the independent agency charged with monitoring our healthcare system, will cease to exist.
And although roughly the same amount of money will continue to be transferred to provinces until 2017, it will mark the beginning of a new stage in Stephen Harper's stealthy war on medicare.
As you probably know, there is nothing I fear more than what Stephen Harper is planning to do to our precious medicare system.
Because he has always hated it, it represents everything he loathes about Canada, and its values.
He went into politics with the support of an organization that was created to destroy it.
And now he's starting to put his monstrous plan into action.
He has waited a long time to make his move. From the day he was first elected with the support of a group that was founded to kill medicare.
He had to restrain himself for so many years. But it was always going to be the biggest, bloodiest, and most prized trophy in his skull rack.
The one that told him the Canada he hated so much was dead at last.
And now the Con War on Medicare has finally begun.
