The reality gap: wait-times edition

The CP follows up on the question of how provinces will respond to the Cons' wait-times funding. And as I'd suspected, the uptake looks to be almost entirely focused on a single area per province rather than any commitment to meet all five of the Cons' targets:

Health Minister Tony Clement says he is close to announcing agreements with most provinces for medical wait-time guarantees...

But the agreements will cover only one area of treatment per province, far short of what was promised in the 2006 election platform...

The 2006 Tory election platform committed the government to “ensure that all Canadians receive essential medical treatment within clinically acceptable waiting times,” suggesting that all essential care would be covered.

The platform identified five priority areas as a starting point: “cancer, heart, diagnostic imaging, joint replacements and sight restoration.”

But Clement conceded that the agreements will be more limited in scope. The priority list is also now open to provincial discretion.

“What we’re asking, for the purposes of this agreement, is for a province or territory to choose one guarantee they would declare in place and operational within the next three years.”

If there's any consolation in this news, it's in the fact that the wait-times concept is itself a flawed one. So at the very least, the provinces' apparent rejection of the Cons' across-the-board standards should have little negative impact on the care received by Canadian patients - and may only ensure that provinces continue to deal with a more complete view of health-care priorities rather than focusing only on the Cons' target areas. (In other words, this is likely another promise better left broken.)

But at the same time, the Cons have been awfully eager to highlight a pool of money that they apparently don't expect provinces to touch. And that massive gap between funding announced and funding actually likely to be provided shows that it isn't just in the area of tax credits that the Cons are actively exaggerating their social investment by taking credit for the potential maximum, while counting on limited uptake to minimize the amount spent and accomplished.

Which makes for yet another area where the Cons' rhetoric bears a tenuous (and shrinking) relation to reality. And their continued eagerness to keep widening that gap in turn offers one more strong reason why they simply can't be trusted.