We aren't talking about health care because the only ways to fix it are remigration, privatization, and rationing, and all of them will burst the boomer bubble of healthy affluence until death.
Our entire political structure rests on a stratum of boomers who believe that things can stay acceptable in Canada (for them) until they die. After which nothing matters.
When that changes, everyone in power now will be swept away.
Boomers don’t compose the majority of the vote anymore. Not even close. I don’t think they influence politicians now as much as they’re given credit for. There are more millennials in Canada than boomers because of immigration. This may mean there aren’t as many voting millennials yet depending on where citizenship is sitting, but boomers have been dying for awhile now. They will continue to die. It’s about time everyone else stops blaming the boomers and is willing to step up and get involved at levels where policy decisions can be influenced. Blaming a generation for politician’s decisions seems like a lazy way out of engaging with a problem to me. You can’t indefinitely blame a disappearing generation with decreasing influence for things that need to be changed.
Recent Abacus polling shows that 60+ are the only age group where support for the Liberals exceeds that for the Conservatives. Without the boomers, the Conservatives would have a substantial lead - and would have won last year's election.
I agree the boomers are keeping the liberals in power for now. The main reason IMO is that their house values are kept artificially high by a low Canadian interest rate policy. Since sovereign borrower rates are presently climbing substantially because of the huge deficits being run by both Canada and the US, low Canadian interest rates will cause the Canadian dollar to tank - not quite to Mexican peso rates IMO, but heading in that direction.
Letting the Canadian dollar drop offsets the impact of tariffs. Im pretty sure the 2 cent drop in the Canadian dollar more than offset the tariff related cost increase to US customers. Now in Canada you have a double whammy.
I expect the US to rely on more outright bans to protect their industries to avoid the exchange rate related dumping Canada is relying on.
Letting the medical services stagnate and tolerating huge delays also facilitates gaslighting of the sick elderly into using MAID which has the shortest wait time of any medical procedure. The problem for the liberals is that you may be killing off more Liberal than Conservative voters.
Definitely. The boomers benefit from high asset values and low real incomes for workers, since they tend to consume services. While they also travel abroad, the ones who do that the most also have foreign assets - so they are protected against a declining CAD. Ruining Canada is in the boomers' selfish interest - if it doesn't happen too fast.
Yep definitely. Also having US assets means that can get medical services in the US and avoid Canadian queues and hallway medicine. If you shop around looking at clinics and nurse practitioners and pay direct - no insurance - rates can be pleasantly surprising. Less than what you might pay in Canada for uncovered serviced according to some of my relatives.
Please look at population data for Canada. Also it’s about who shows up to vote. While I voted conservative in the last election, with how they’ve behaved since then I’m actually glad they didn’t win now. My generation will never determine an election. But boomers have lost the massive numbers as well.
If 60+ is the only age group where Liberal support exceeds Conservative support, then that is necessarily the age cohort that Liberal rule depends on. (Barring absurdly improbable geographic distribution of support). Please review basic arithmetic.
Do you need to be reminded that those who vote are who actually determine government? It doesn’t matter if 90% of a group support anything, if only 5% turn out while 100% of the 10% turn out, the minority view wins. This is also arithmetic but perhaps more complicated. Additionally, polls are based on samples. We know they don’t accurately predict outcomes.
Polls last I heard were showing liberals gaining seats in Alberta - a province where the average age of resident is lower than anywhere else in Canada. Alberta boomers are largely conservative voters.
Some day you will be the oldest generation alive too. Just like it will be my turn too. You can’t blame a generation who doesn’t make up the majority of the voting population on a result you don’t like. Well - you can - but it’s patently wrong. And some day the younger generation will generalize about and blame you too. I guess what goes around comes around. Enjoy your glass house while it lasts.
It literally doesn't matter at what rate people vote for this argument. If the only age cohort that prefers Liberals to Conservatives is 60+, and the Liberals win, then that is obviously due to the 60+ because, had they not preferred the Liberals, nobody would have. Now, maybe the youth could have overwhelmed them with enough turnout, but only the 60+ actually prefer the Liberals. I don't see why this is so difficult.
I think there is general apathy around healthcare which is why people aren’t talking about it. Politicians lack the motivation because it’s not politically good to talk about it. We have a much less effective press overall so they’re not asking about it during election campaigns. And it’s harder than ever for people to reach politicians in a way that meaningfully influences them. So politicians get to talk about what they want to talk about which is the areas they feel like they can improve things or change things.
I think it’s misaligned incentives combined with a bureaucracy that isn’t willing or able to do anything to fix itself because there’s such a huge management class.
Not saying those are acceptable reasons - but maybe addressing the press or finding ways to actually force the topic into the public light is the first step.
Because it’s not a quick fix. Because unions and lobby groups all want more money but aren’t willing to put in more work. There are systemic issues that require open discussion but they’re not things solved with adding $50 million to the budget. Complex problems that require time, planning, and action aren’t the forte of our politicians. Politicians want easy wins, short blurbs that can be produced as proof of their success, and want to claim the success for themselves. Something that may take a decade to lead to noticeable changes won’t ever benefit them.
Take doctors for instance - it’s not a funding problem, but a med school enrollment cap problem. Of all the people who want to be doctors, less than 10% get admitted into med school. Then there are limited residency spaces meaning that not everyone who finishes med school gets the experience they need to be fully licensed and practice independently. It’s not a willingness or money issue - the institutions and regulatory boards have created scarcity because it’s job security for doctors - they think they know how many doctors are needed and they’ve gotten that wrong.
We rely on recruiting from other provinces in AB to increase our supply of doctors - when we have 2 med schools that if they increased enrollment would lead to increased doctors within 7-8 years. But that’s not the problem politicians talk about. They throw money at healthcare as if that’s the only problem. And it’s not. You have to train more doctors to actually increase access to family doctors. The rest would follow with increased office spaces etc. and yes there’d probably need to be increased funding to pay the increased salaries. But first we need the doctors. The doctor shortage has been manufactured by limited admissions into med school and limited residency positions. Of course not every applicant is suitable to become a doctor. But more than 10% I’m sure are given what they’ve proven before applying for med school.
But this isn’t something that can get a sound bite in the evening news. And it makes a whole group of people worry that they’ll have less job security and lower income earning potential. So it’s not popular. But it’s the most meaningful long term thing that could be done across the country to increase doctors. It’s just not politically beneficial to tell voters you have a plan that will help them in 8-10 years.
Liberals don't want to draw attention to the medical system because they would have to own the failure.
Conservatives don't want to talk about it because the only viable solution - the dreaded "two tier" health system used in every other country in the world and increasingly in Canada by stealth, is so politically toxic to Canada's helpless and easily manipulated population. It's a fantastic wedge issue against the Canadian right who are already suspected of being pro-American and therefore willing to bankrupt us all with "$500 Tylenols" in a system taken without modification from the US.
Australia has consistently better outcomes within a well regulated public/private system. We should start by looking at what they do right. But making any changes requires a level of maturity that Canadians are incapable of.
While not denying that Trump is problematic we’ve fallen for a red herring approach where governments, political leaders and lesser lights use him as an excuse to mask and divert attention away from many real issues, such as healthcare, that need to and must be addressed constructively.
Not talking about healthcare despite it being a huge concern is a widespread issue. I think the reason is that the solutions are complex and technical, so they don't lend themselves to political slogans. Most people know it's a problem, but they don't even really understand what the problem is or how to fix it. Just that it's not working. No shortage of people saying that the solution is the unrelated thing they wanted to do anyway of course. But that hobby-horse-riding naturally makes people suspicious that they're not trying to improve healthcare, so people don't like it.
The US experience over the past 15 years is instructive. Throughout that time, healthcare has been a major concern. The Affordable Care Act was a major reform that in a lot of technical terms really improved the system. For the better part of a decade it was a huge millstone around Democrats. Then when Republicans got into power, they tried to reform it and suddenly it was popular, or at least repealing it was unpopular. The real consensus was that there were big problems, but the voters were worried about changes.
You see this in Canada too, any reform is met with doom mongering "make it like American Healthcare". Then the usual rejoinder "It doesn't have to be American, it can be German or Swiss or whatever." Followed by the listener not knowing what that even means and tuning out.
Do you really think that support for the existing system is only coming from Boomers? Were that the case there would be a healthy debate and a push for reform. No, there is still majority support across all age groups for the inflexible and wasteful single payer system currently in place and this will only change with responsible leadership from our politicians, something so unlikely that change is just not in the cards any time soon.
We aren't talking about health care because the only ways to fix it are remigration, privatization, and rationing, and all of them will burst the boomer bubble of healthy affluence until death.
Our entire political structure rests on a stratum of boomers who believe that things can stay acceptable in Canada (for them) until they die. After which nothing matters.
When that changes, everyone in power now will be swept away.
Boomers don’t compose the majority of the vote anymore. Not even close. I don’t think they influence politicians now as much as they’re given credit for. There are more millennials in Canada than boomers because of immigration. This may mean there aren’t as many voting millennials yet depending on where citizenship is sitting, but boomers have been dying for awhile now. They will continue to die. It’s about time everyone else stops blaming the boomers and is willing to step up and get involved at levels where policy decisions can be influenced. Blaming a generation for politician’s decisions seems like a lazy way out of engaging with a problem to me. You can’t indefinitely blame a disappearing generation with decreasing influence for things that need to be changed.
Recent Abacus polling shows that 60+ are the only age group where support for the Liberals exceeds that for the Conservatives. Without the boomers, the Conservatives would have a substantial lead - and would have won last year's election.
I agree the boomers are keeping the liberals in power for now. The main reason IMO is that their house values are kept artificially high by a low Canadian interest rate policy. Since sovereign borrower rates are presently climbing substantially because of the huge deficits being run by both Canada and the US, low Canadian interest rates will cause the Canadian dollar to tank - not quite to Mexican peso rates IMO, but heading in that direction.
Letting the Canadian dollar drop offsets the impact of tariffs. Im pretty sure the 2 cent drop in the Canadian dollar more than offset the tariff related cost increase to US customers. Now in Canada you have a double whammy.
I expect the US to rely on more outright bans to protect their industries to avoid the exchange rate related dumping Canada is relying on.
Letting the medical services stagnate and tolerating huge delays also facilitates gaslighting of the sick elderly into using MAID which has the shortest wait time of any medical procedure. The problem for the liberals is that you may be killing off more Liberal than Conservative voters.
Definitely. The boomers benefit from high asset values and low real incomes for workers, since they tend to consume services. While they also travel abroad, the ones who do that the most also have foreign assets - so they are protected against a declining CAD. Ruining Canada is in the boomers' selfish interest - if it doesn't happen too fast.
Yep definitely. Also having US assets means that can get medical services in the US and avoid Canadian queues and hallway medicine. If you shop around looking at clinics and nurse practitioners and pay direct - no insurance - rates can be pleasantly surprising. Less than what you might pay in Canada for uncovered serviced according to some of my relatives.
Please look at population data for Canada. Also it’s about who shows up to vote. While I voted conservative in the last election, with how they’ve behaved since then I’m actually glad they didn’t win now. My generation will never determine an election. But boomers have lost the massive numbers as well.
If 60+ is the only age group where Liberal support exceeds Conservative support, then that is necessarily the age cohort that Liberal rule depends on. (Barring absurdly improbable geographic distribution of support). Please review basic arithmetic.
Do you need to be reminded that those who vote are who actually determine government? It doesn’t matter if 90% of a group support anything, if only 5% turn out while 100% of the 10% turn out, the minority view wins. This is also arithmetic but perhaps more complicated. Additionally, polls are based on samples. We know they don’t accurately predict outcomes.
Polls last I heard were showing liberals gaining seats in Alberta - a province where the average age of resident is lower than anywhere else in Canada. Alberta boomers are largely conservative voters.
Some day you will be the oldest generation alive too. Just like it will be my turn too. You can’t blame a generation who doesn’t make up the majority of the voting population on a result you don’t like. Well - you can - but it’s patently wrong. And some day the younger generation will generalize about and blame you too. I guess what goes around comes around. Enjoy your glass house while it lasts.
It literally doesn't matter at what rate people vote for this argument. If the only age cohort that prefers Liberals to Conservatives is 60+, and the Liberals win, then that is obviously due to the 60+ because, had they not preferred the Liberals, nobody would have. Now, maybe the youth could have overwhelmed them with enough turnout, but only the 60+ actually prefer the Liberals. I don't see why this is so difficult.
I think there is general apathy around healthcare which is why people aren’t talking about it. Politicians lack the motivation because it’s not politically good to talk about it. We have a much less effective press overall so they’re not asking about it during election campaigns. And it’s harder than ever for people to reach politicians in a way that meaningfully influences them. So politicians get to talk about what they want to talk about which is the areas they feel like they can improve things or change things.
I think it’s misaligned incentives combined with a bureaucracy that isn’t willing or able to do anything to fix itself because there’s such a huge management class.
Not saying those are acceptable reasons - but maybe addressing the press or finding ways to actually force the topic into the public light is the first step.
Of course this is true. But why is it not politically good to talk about it?
Think of the healthcare system as a ‘political tar baby’ - whoever touches it gets stuck in a mess.
It’s easier to squander tax money on bandaids than battling an entrenched bureaucracy.
Because it’s not a quick fix. Because unions and lobby groups all want more money but aren’t willing to put in more work. There are systemic issues that require open discussion but they’re not things solved with adding $50 million to the budget. Complex problems that require time, planning, and action aren’t the forte of our politicians. Politicians want easy wins, short blurbs that can be produced as proof of their success, and want to claim the success for themselves. Something that may take a decade to lead to noticeable changes won’t ever benefit them.
Take doctors for instance - it’s not a funding problem, but a med school enrollment cap problem. Of all the people who want to be doctors, less than 10% get admitted into med school. Then there are limited residency spaces meaning that not everyone who finishes med school gets the experience they need to be fully licensed and practice independently. It’s not a willingness or money issue - the institutions and regulatory boards have created scarcity because it’s job security for doctors - they think they know how many doctors are needed and they’ve gotten that wrong.
We rely on recruiting from other provinces in AB to increase our supply of doctors - when we have 2 med schools that if they increased enrollment would lead to increased doctors within 7-8 years. But that’s not the problem politicians talk about. They throw money at healthcare as if that’s the only problem. And it’s not. You have to train more doctors to actually increase access to family doctors. The rest would follow with increased office spaces etc. and yes there’d probably need to be increased funding to pay the increased salaries. But first we need the doctors. The doctor shortage has been manufactured by limited admissions into med school and limited residency positions. Of course not every applicant is suitable to become a doctor. But more than 10% I’m sure are given what they’ve proven before applying for med school.
But this isn’t something that can get a sound bite in the evening news. And it makes a whole group of people worry that they’ll have less job security and lower income earning potential. So it’s not popular. But it’s the most meaningful long term thing that could be done across the country to increase doctors. It’s just not politically beneficial to tell voters you have a plan that will help them in 8-10 years.
Liberals don't want to draw attention to the medical system because they would have to own the failure.
Conservatives don't want to talk about it because the only viable solution - the dreaded "two tier" health system used in every other country in the world and increasingly in Canada by stealth, is so politically toxic to Canada's helpless and easily manipulated population. It's a fantastic wedge issue against the Canadian right who are already suspected of being pro-American and therefore willing to bankrupt us all with "$500 Tylenols" in a system taken without modification from the US.
Australia has consistently better outcomes within a well regulated public/private system. We should start by looking at what they do right. But making any changes requires a level of maturity that Canadians are incapable of.
While not denying that Trump is problematic we’ve fallen for a red herring approach where governments, political leaders and lesser lights use him as an excuse to mask and divert attention away from many real issues, such as healthcare, that need to and must be addressed constructively.
Not talking about healthcare despite it being a huge concern is a widespread issue. I think the reason is that the solutions are complex and technical, so they don't lend themselves to political slogans. Most people know it's a problem, but they don't even really understand what the problem is or how to fix it. Just that it's not working. No shortage of people saying that the solution is the unrelated thing they wanted to do anyway of course. But that hobby-horse-riding naturally makes people suspicious that they're not trying to improve healthcare, so people don't like it.
The US experience over the past 15 years is instructive. Throughout that time, healthcare has been a major concern. The Affordable Care Act was a major reform that in a lot of technical terms really improved the system. For the better part of a decade it was a huge millstone around Democrats. Then when Republicans got into power, they tried to reform it and suddenly it was popular, or at least repealing it was unpopular. The real consensus was that there were big problems, but the voters were worried about changes.
You see this in Canada too, any reform is met with doom mongering "make it like American Healthcare". Then the usual rejoinder "It doesn't have to be American, it can be German or Swiss or whatever." Followed by the listener not knowing what that even means and tuning out.
Do you really think that support for the existing system is only coming from Boomers? Were that the case there would be a healthy debate and a push for reform. No, there is still majority support across all age groups for the inflexible and wasteful single payer system currently in place and this will only change with responsible leadership from our politicians, something so unlikely that change is just not in the cards any time soon.