Third WHAT?

Yesterday the Alberta Government unveiled its 'Third Way' strategy to increase privatization in that province's health care system. The Klein regime claims the ten-point plan is necessary because health care expenditures take up 40% of the provincial budget. Since taking power in 1994, Klein's Conservatives have privatized everything from parks to liquor stores to government registries, while at the same time slashing funding to education and encouraging a boom in charter (read: private) schools. In Canada's most 'have' province, that 40% doesn't look like much when the other 60% of the budget is really a slush fund to buy Conservative votes.

'Third Way' is a misnomer, unless Klein and Co. are looking over to screw over Albertans in the same way Tony Blair (inventor of the Third Way) screwed over Liverpool Dockers and David Kelly. It also implies a compromise, but when wealthy patients can pay cash to move to the front of the line, and doctors can seamlessly disregard the public system for private profits, Albertans get as much compromise as if they were told to empty their pockets and put their hands up.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruling overturning Quebec's ban on private health care doesn't necessarily open the door to further privatization, the only real judgment was that patients have a right to care in a timely manner, which begs this question: What happens when someone can't get timely care because private health care has eroded the public system, and that patient can't afford private care? Turn that SCOC ruling around, and the right to timely care trumps the right to profit, which could mean Mr. Klein may be looking at a fourth or fifth way sooner than he thinks.