On necessary fights

Meanwhile, as the Libs declare their intention to fight on softwood lumber only after it's too late, their leadership frontrunner has announced his intention to be nothing more than a bystander in one of the few even bigger fights facing Canada:

A federal Liberal government under Bob Rae would staunchly defend Canada's universal, taxpayer-funded health care system, but would not oppose increased use of the private sector to deliver those health services, Rae suggested on Thursday...

At a news conference in Toronto, Rae for the most part steered clear of the country's ongoing debate over public vs. private medicine.

But, when asked, he did not reject the notion of more private delivery of medical services that are paid for by tax dollars and available free to everyone.

Rae's provisos might provide a veneer of universal accessibility for the moment. But they plainly ignore both the ease with which a system which moves further toward private delivery could be shfited toward a pay-for-faster-service model under a future government, and the effect on the public system where practitioners take their services elsewhere. And that kind of short-sighted thinking is the last thing Canada needs to fix a system which is just now nearing reconstruction following the Libs' cuts of the mid-90s.

On a wider scope, much of the discussion around the Libs' leadership race has surrounded the potential for the party to move to the left. But any actual momentum, on a range of issues ranging from Ignatieff's plan to ignore Kyoto to virtually the whole slate's insistence on quagmire-building in Afghanistan to Rae's announcement today, has been squarely in the opposite direction. And with health care now added all the more clearly to the list of key issues where the Libs don't seem interested in defending progressive interests, the door is wide open for the NDP to provide the voice needed to do so.