"Our reporting was fairly balanced for most of the (1973 Quebec election) campaign, but we did an editorial sand-bag job on the P.Q. (the separatist Parti Quebecois), complete with publication of a poll indicating a Liberal victory. There was no indication of the number of people sampled so the fact that I consulted only seven people....never came to light."

Newspaper magnate Conrad Black, on his early days as owner of the L'Avenier, a Sept-Iles, Quebec, newspaper. From Conrad Black, A Life in Progress (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1993.)
 
 

I had just digested the news in Sunday's Ottawa Citizen that the Canadian Medical Association, the organization that represents the country's doctors,  favoured limits on  medicare (Doctors want restrictions on  medicare, August 13, 2000), when I picked up Monday's Citizen to discover a new poll that says Canadians favour  exactly what the CMA is said to favour -- limits to medicare. I groaned. Not another one of those polls with tortured questions and dubious conclusions that clash with every other poll and challenge what is known by anyone who hasn't spent the last 10 years locked away in a cave as a subject in a circadian rhythms experiment. This poll was looking like the equivalent of, "New poll shows teens turning off french fries in favour of liver, spinach and limburger cheese." Yeah, right.

My scepticism didn't lessen one iota when I discovered that the poll was sponsored by the CMA itself. But get this: While 58 per cent were said to favour the option of limiting the range of services covered by medicare, 83 per cent wanted funding for medicare increased, even if it meant raising taxes. This, it might be added, is consistent with just about every other poll that's been published on the matter for years. Yet despite the greater preference for increased funding, the headline read, "Canadians favour limits to medicare coverage," the equivalent of running a headline the day after D-day declaring, "Majority of soldiers seasick in channel crossing" without mentioning the invasion itself.

My scepticism shifted from the CMA to the Citizen when I discovered that the CMA is calling on governments to provide stable, long-term and adequate funding, including a $1.74-billion  investment in medical technology, which is not only consistent with the preferences of the vast majority of Canadians, as revealed in the CMA-sponsored poll, but went unmentioned by Mark Kennedy, a Citizen reporter, in his Sunday article on the CMA meeting.

In other words, the CMA is calling for adequate funding of medicare, and has a poll to show that the majority of Canadians want adequate funding.

But what the Citizen reported is that the CMA is calling for a debate on limits to medicare, and has a poll to show that Canadians favour limits.

Both sets of statements are true, but which is the more newsworthy depends on your perspective.

If you're interested in promoting two-tier health care, the second is more arresting.

Can we surmise that the Citizen is promoting two-tier health care (a basic, bare-bones, public service with a parallel private system for the rich)?

The question about favouring limits to medicare required respondents to assume that public health care wasn't going to be adequately funded. In other words, six of ten respondents said that they would favour limiting the services medicare covers, if medicare was to continue to be underfunded. But a majority favoured the opposite of what the premise of the question implied. It's like asking Canadians how they would prefer to be executed: by lethal injection or electric chair, and upon discovering that the majority say lethal injection, fashioning a headline that reads, "Most Canadians want to be lethally injected."

This is reminiscent of a  poll the Citizen ran a year or so ago, claiming to show that Canadians favour two-tier medicine. As it turned out the poll said nothing more profound that if given a choice between becoming ill or dying and footing the bill for an operation themselves, most Canadians would choose to foot the bill (assuming they could afford it.) The Citizen ran a headline along the lines of, "Canadians support two-tiered health care." The newspaper forgot the qualifier: "if given no choice."

Respondents to the most recent poll the Citizen covered were also asked if they would accept longer queues for some services, again, if health care was to continue to be inadequately funded. And here's the kicker. As many said they would accept longer waiting lines, as said they would favour restrictions on services.

Now, if you favour two-tiered medicine, which finding are you going to emphasize?

Not the finding that most Canadians favour increased funding of medicare (which, additionally, because this finding says Canadians would even accept higher taxes, is inconsistent with all the nonsense about tax rage that the Citizen, and a fair number of other Canadian newspapers, like to spout. How could you square, "Canadians poised for tax revolt," with "Canadians prepared to pay higher taxes to save medicare"? It would be like wearing Wall-Mart underwear with Versace.)

And the finding that Canadians are willing to put up with longer queues for services if medicare remains underfunded, wouldn't help your cause either.

But you might emphasize the finding that seems to say, "Cut back medicare to cover some services. Those who can afford it can pay for the delisted services themselves. Everyone else will have to do without. Tough yes, but, lean times require mean solutions." That's what the "Canadians favour limits to medicare finding" implies.

Canadians don't, however, accept the premise on which the push for two-tiered medicine revolves: that medicare can't be funded adequately, or that health care is, as the Citizen put it, under "financial pressure,"  except pressure imposed by governments which would rather claim poverty so that they can shower tax cuts on the comfortable, while running public services -- like health care -- into the ground. This, poll after poll, shows. So some polls, unhappy with Canadians' obstinance in failing to accept the necessity of dismantling public services altogether, simply change the ground rules. "Okay", they say; "We know you want health care to be funded adequately, but suppose it can't be."

Let's suppose it can be, because it can.

The federal government isn't anxious for this to be widely known. Awash in surplus revenue, it claims poverty, a claim which rings as hollow as Bill Gates turning away a Cancer Society canvasser on grounds that he's a little tight this month.  It's hard to claim poverty when you're living in a palace, and equally as hard when the country's public accounts keep annoyingly falling in the black. So, the federal government conjures up fairy-tales for not spending on health care and other public services, and an ever compliant and sympathetic press rushes in with support, like an offensive tackle opening a hole in the defensive line to clear the way for a goal line rush to two-tiered services. A cataract of nonsense spills from the presses, more properly in the realm of propaganda than elucidation. The Citizen, as one example, speaks of  one-third of provincial  budgets being "swallowed up" by health care expense. Since health care and education count as the provinces' major responsibilities it's no surprise that health care commands such a significant share of provincial expenditures, but one-third is supposed to strike us as alarmingly large.

Impending tax revolts, a drain of talented people to the U.S. said to be lured by lower taxes south of the border, anaemic productivity caused by high taxes, OECD recommendations, the necessity of debt reduction, all trotted out, whenever, "We just don't have the money" loses all its persuasive power, as it has with news of the federal treasury spilling over with billions of dollars in surplus.  As cash trickles over the side of the trough, Finance Department functionaries are stationed below, pitch-forking gobs of it to investors , businesses and the rich, in the form of tax cuts and debt reduction. The rest of us, meanwhile, get twisted polls and the tortuous, self-serving premises of the well-to-do, served up by the Citizen, and other outlets of the Ministry of Propaganda.