Month: May 2004

In 1986, Richard Petty and John Cacioppo developed a model which outlined two routes by which a person (or an audience) is persuaded by a speaker to believe a certain message. The two formed the dual-process model of persuasion which described a central route and a peripheral route to persuasion. The central route focuses on the validity and the strength of an argument, while the peripheral focuses not on the argument but on other cues both visual and auditory.

The model has long been applied to political campaigns and this (pre-)campaign is no different.

Two political parties are vying to form the next Canadian federal government. The Liberal Party of Canada and Paul Martin have given us a view of the campaign that they are about to wage upon the Conservative Party of Canada and its leader Stephen Harper. Before the Liberals had a chance to release them, attack ads are describing Stephen Harper as an “extremist” and as one Liberal has visually shown in what was called a stunt by the media, ‘If Stephen Harper is Prime Minister, for health care you’ll need this (as the Liberal shows a credit card)’. ‘However, under Paul Martin you’ll only need this’, the Liberal explains as he holds up an Ontario Health Card. The Liberal Party of Canada is resorting to using visual cues and emotionally charged words (auditory cues) to describe Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada. An “extremist” can be nothing but bad as Canadians believe in Peace, Order and Good Government, so how on Earth could they vote for such a man who wants to ‘destroy’ health care. The Liberals are using the peripheral route to persuasion. This method is insulting to Canadians as the Liberals, by using loaded buzzwords such as “extremist”, “evangelical Christian”, “two-tier health care”, “destroy” amounts to waving a set of jingling set of keys, flashing in the sun, in the collective face of Canadians while not defending their record over the past 11 years. Indeed, the new “Martin brand” which retired the old “Liberal brand” is a testament to the Liberal election strategy.

Conversely, the Conservative Party of Canada has taken the strategy of the central route to persuasion and it may be the most effective for them. The party has a message to deliver to Canadians as it is a new party and as it obviously has new ideas to implement. Stephen Harper is by no means flamboyant and would not be described as a media darling so he is a perfect messenger for a solid argument: Canada is broken, we can fix it, and here’s how. While the Liberals are trying to conjure up the image of an extremist boogieman in Stephen Harper by saying that he’ll ‘destroy’ healthcare, if you listen closely Mr. Harper says,

“No one should be denied necessary medical service because of inability to pay… The position of our party is clear. We must focus our attention not on the management structure of health care, but on its accessibility. It does not matter who delivers health care; it matters who can receive it” — Stephen Harper, May 10th 2004

The position of the Conservative Party of Canada has been clarified by Stephen Harper. The message is completely clear. Contrast this with Pierre Pettigrew’s back-and-forth on delivery and Paul Martin’s correction on where his party may stand on the issue. Never mind that Mr. Martin’s own family doctor Sheldon Elman operates a clinic which is part of a company which operates private clinics in Toronto. Such revelations indicate a muddled Liberal message thus explaining their need to take a peripheral route and label Harper as “extremist”.

A vote has to be earned and should not be stolen through fear-mongering. This theft is be especially compounded when there is no basis for fear. The Liberal Party of Canada must not think much of the attention span of Canadians if it thinks that it can distract Canadians with gimmicks and buzzwords while it sits on a mountain of a scandal that is Adscam.

While watching the hockey playoffs on CBC, like most of us, I’ve seen ads for CBC’s “Greatest Canadian” where viewers get to go to CBC’s website and nominate their choice for which canuck they deem most worth for this honour. It’s Ra Ra Canada as usual and while I have become desensitized to CBC’s ‘projects’ the television got my attention when, during one of the commercials, a couple is arguing whether the Greatest Canadian is indeed Rocket Richard or René Lévesque.

René Lévesque?

They must have had a good laugh over at the CBC for throwing this inflammatory name into the mix. While people such as Laura Secord or Billy Bishop, fought for this country, Lévesque fought to break it up.

Or is the mere mention of Lévesque as a contender enough to goad Canadians into voting for somebody more worthy? If so, good job CBC.

So, to equate silliness with silliness, those of us in the Canadian political blogosphere have encouraged our readers to nominate Don Cherry as the Greatest Canadian (see our little tongue-in-cheek ploy here and here). I wonder what the CBC would do then, after refusing to renew Don Cherry’s contract.

The voting process isn’t audited… so easy money on Pierre Trudeau.

There must be an election coming up. When health care is discussed, Canadians listen, and it seems every party is trying to get the attention of all Canadians. Last week, the Minister of Health, Pierre Pettigrew said:

“If some provinces want to experiment with the private delivery option, my view is that
as long as they respect the single-payer, public payer, we should be examining these
efforts” — Pierre Pettigrew, April 27th 2004

When comments such as this one are made by the Conservative Party they are labeled as cold-hearted, American, vile etc. etc. etc. However, when a Liberal cabinet minister raises the issue of “private delivery”, the Liberals chalk it up to open constructive debate concerning health care. Indeed Anne McLellan, our Liberal deputy PM, asserted that concerning the Canada Health Act, �It’s important to put everything on the table.�

The NDP’s position on the issue is clear on the surface, yet misleading underneath. On their website, claiming that we must protect “free” access to healthcare, the NDP quotes Pettigrew “You can go with your slogans and say [private, for-profit delivery of health care is] wrong and it�s bad, fine” (square brackets added by the NDP). The NDP underlines its position by then stating “Voters get to decide which party really wants to improve public health care with new ideas and investments � not privatization”.

Where does the Conservative Party stand on this issue? After being flogged by the Liberals for years for mentioning any “new ideas” about health care delivery, the CPC takes one step back and plays the same game as everyone else. From their website, the party supports “universal public health insurance, regardless of ability to pay” and criticizes the Liberals on “confusion on private delivery � Ann McLellan is for it; Pierre Pettigrew is for it sometimes, and not against it other times; and Paul Martin, well, wouldn�t it be good to know”

So what is this game that all of the parties are playing? The parties assume that the average Canadian doesn’t know the difference between privatization and private delivery, and to their credit, they’re correct. When Canadians hear “private” or any derivation of “private” they all think the same thing: “You mean there’s going to be a line for rich people and a line for the rest of us? How am I going to afford treatment?” This is privatization. When you have to pay for an MRI out of your own pocket, this is privatization.

When we talk about private delivery, what is meant is that as Canadians, as a collective of tax payers, we have this big pile of cash. From this pile of cash we establish a competitive bidding process between private companies who compete for a contract. Since this process is competitive, the process drives down the cost of delivery; if Company A is charging too much, Company B will try and beat their price. The key principle out of all of this is that any private company that provides service is paid out of the public pot, not out of the pocket of the patient. This is private delivery of services from the public’s (ie. the government’s) pocket. The question that we must ask ourselves is do we want our government to pay a private company, one that specializes in its field and one that can provide the most competitive price, or do we want our government to pay a bureaucratic unionized public delivery system? This is the choice between private delivery and public delivery. In an analogous comparison one might ask, “Do we want the government to buy its light bulbs from Canadian Tire/Home Depot/Zeller’s/Walmart/Costco/Shopper’s Drug Mart/A&P or would we rather that our government manufacture their own light bulbs in its own factory when they need replacing?

Every party is playing on this very distinct difference between privatization and private delivery by blurring this distinction on based the linguistic similarity of the two terms. The Liberals did it last week (here) (and have attacked the conservatives on it over the past decade or so), the Conservatives does it here and the NDP does it here.

On misleading the public based on this key difference, the Liberals are guilty, the Conservatives are guilty and the NDP is guilty. Perhaps we need to rename “private delivery” to something which is linguistically different from “privatization”. These terms are not interchangeable. May I suggest the following terms: “Efficiency-based delivery” or “Government-administered private delivery (GAPD)”

The Conservative party should emphasize this distinction and provide debate for GAPD as they have always done. This is a better strategy than trying to stake a vague position on “universal access”. To the credit of the Conservative party, they are pointing-out the flip-flopping of the Liberal Party. While the CPC does believe in universal access, they should point out that Pierre Pettigrew was originally correct. Pierre got it right. Conservatives should fight for a clearer definition of terms instead of for perpetual policy ambiguity which is propagated by all three parties for the sake of political positioning.

Private delivery is a cost-saving measure that provides cheaper and higher quality, government regulated, health care and therefore I say let’s do it. It may be the best opportunity that we, as Canadians have, for health care that is publicly funded.