No help at all

Tony Clement has predictably refused to do anything to deal with the obvious problems with a wait-times plan that narrowly focuses on only a few procedures, suggesting that provinces seek to improve wait times across the board but offering neither funding nor ideas to get there:

Clement said the task of reducing wait times shouldn’t stop (with the five procedures), and he would be willing to look at reducing emergency room wait times, given recent problems some Ontario ERs have been experiencing...

However, he says the federal government won’t be doling out more money to the provinces to lessen wait times.

Clement said his government is adequately funding health care, including $5.5 billion over several years earmarked for reducing wait times.

“It must be a question of management,” he said.

“That’s my only conclusion, because it certainly isn’t a lack of resources.”

Needless to say, Clement's apparent view is wrong on more than a few levels. On the question of whether the issue is a lack of resources, the steady correlation between increased inputs and better results should suggest that there's plenty of reason to believe that a lack of money is indeed the issue. And to the extent that management issues are in play, the disproportionate focus on the Cons' five procedures to the exclusion of reducing waiting lists across the board is a far more obvious source of resource misallocation than anything Clement seems prepared to point out.

Of course, Clement can't really be expected to deviate from the Cons' general view that any government funding is too much. But it's clear that he sorely lacks anything resembling a prescription to improve the condition of Canada's health care system. And both the provinces and Canadians generally should rightly be seeking a second opinion as to what can cure the system's current ailments.