2000: The Liberals run attack ads against the Alliance, saying the Alliance wants the private, for-profit hospitals the Liberal government just allowed to open in Alberta.
2002: Roy Romanow proposes solutions for health care, including keeping the system public.
2003: Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien reaches a health accord with the provinces ? the same health accord Paul Martin speaks about in Liberal pre-election ads. In Parliament, then-Alliance Leader Stephen Harper congratulates the Liberals because the accord contains, ?no restrictions on private health care delivery within the public system.? Liberal and Alliance MPs share a bizarre, joint standing ovation.
2003: Paul Martin?s transition team is headed by Mike Robinson, who as a corporate lobbyist represented MDS ? a private, for-profit health deliverer.
December 12, 2003: Paul Martin becomes Prime Minister. He appoints Bruce Young as his senior BC adviser in the PMO, someone who 14 days previous was a corporate lobbyist for a dozen private, for-profit health clinics in BC. Martin also appoints John McKay as Canada?s first Cabinet-level proponent of P3 privatization.
February 12, 2004: The Liberal Throne Speech doesn?t contain the words ?public delivery? or ?Romanow?.
March 23, 2004: The Liberal budget doesn?t contain a penny in new health care base funding. It also doesn?t include the words ?public delivery? or ?Romanow?.
March 26, 2004: A Canadian Press story says the Liberals will re-open the Canada Health Act to permit more flexibility on private delivery. Desperate to deflect criticism, Martin mentions ?Romanow? in a speech in Winnipeg, a word conveniently absent from his Liberal leadership documents and recent Throne Speech.
April 7, 2004: Jack Layton delivers a speech highlighting the fact the Liberals are the same as the Conservatives on health care: ?The Liberals don't even speak about publicly-delivered health care anymore. It's all publicly-funded now...code words for tax dollars paying private health corporations to deliver health care.?
April 20, 2004: Health Minister Pierre Pettigrew delivers what?s billed as a major health speech in which he speaks about ?private delivery?, but somehow forgets ?public delivery? of health care.
April 25, 2004: On CTV?s Question Period, Pettigrew says Liberal policy isn?t public delivery of health care: ?For instance, there are flexibilities in that act that deserve to be explored. For instance, public management. It is not the public ownership, it?s the public management of things.?
April 26, 2004: Health Minister Pierre Pettigrew attacks NDP health critic Bev Desjarlais in health committee: ?You can go with your slogans and say [private, for-profit delivery of health care is] wrong and it?s bad, fine.?
April 27, 2004: In Pettigrew?s hastily-called damage control press conference, he says he now supports ?public delivery? of health care.
June 14, 2004?: Voters get to decide which party really wants to improve public health care with new ideas and investments ?not privatization.
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