By RAE MURPHY

N 1919 the Liberal Party in
convention put forward in
their platform a medicare
scheme of sorts. Now, 47 years
later, it is before Parliament. Or
was—after first reading, the bill
has now been =a ee the

could be raised about the prin-
ciple of public health care, but
they have all been said before,
and repeated again and again.

Last - week the archaic argu-
ments against medicare were all
raised in the House again. The
hypocritical philosophy of the
poorhouse and charitybeds was
spouted by, Robert Thompson,
leader of the Social Credit Party.

“In my opinion the govern-
ment does have a responsibility
to assist those who are unable
to provide for their own needs,”
said Thompson. “If we accom-
plish that then we are meeting
our responsibilities as our bro-
thers’ keepers.

To Giles Gregoire of the Cre-
ditistes, medicare conjured up
vision of creeping socialism:
“Let someone tell us why the
people of Saskatchewan leave
it to go to live in Alberta and

SOCRED THOMPSON
“his brother’s keeper”

British Columbia. They do, be-
cause they are fed up with so-
cialism, where the state tries to
manage everything for the indi-
vidual; the individual is not
trusted; he is denied responsi-
bilities.”

packed it in and had left Ottawa
for their holidays. New Demo-
cratic MP’s went over the
ground again, demanding the
enactment of medicare now, and
a few more diversionary issues
were brought up by the Tories.

The findings of the Hall Com-
mission, now already two years
old, were dusted off by the NDP,
and Davie Fulton spoke about
other “national priorities” that
supérsede. medicare while an-
other Tory figured that with
medicare too many people would
go to doctors to get cured and
that there aren’t enough doctors
or facilities to go around.

While the arguments go round
and round, more than half of
our people are without ‘“ade-
quate” medical protection.
They'll remain so _ because
there’s a dirty cynical game of
politics being played and the
tune is still being called by the
obscurantists in the Canadian
Medical Association and the
“fast buck” artists in the insur-
ance racket.

The banalities of the debate
in Parliament aside, it is worth-
while perhaps to go into some
of the back-room manoeuvring
that has got the medicare bill
hoisted until fall. _

The government was commit-
ted to either complete the pas-
sage of the medicare bill, or at
least go through second reading
of it, right up until the last day
or two of this session. Prime
Minister Pearson promised the
people of Canada the bill at this
session and although it has been
demonstrated often enough that
his promises don’t mean any-
thing he is also reported to have

MEDICARE

don't know where... don't know when...

assured Allan MacEachen, min-
ister of health and welfare, that
the bill would come. up for se-
cond reading before  adjourn-
ment. But a deal he made with
the Tories took precedence and
MacEachen was scuttled.

The postponement of the me.
dicare bill until fall, even if it
does come up for adoption early
in the session (and don’t give
any odds on that), could well
delay any national medicare
scheme well beyond the 1967
deadline. Simply because the bill
is geared to the implementation
of complementary plans in the
provinces, and this delay gives
them an “out,” with the. excuse
that they didn’t have the federal
bill in their hands to study over
the summer while they were
drawing their fall legislative
programs.

There is, however a more seri-
ous danger to the implementa-
tion of medicare than. that. It
has to do with the frontal attack
on the plan that is now being
conducted.

Typical of this campaign is an
editorial in the Globe and Mail
which accuses MacEachen of
“blackmailing” the provinces

with his plan. Says the Globe
and Mail:
“Three provinces have made

it clear that they do not approve
of the federal pane in its present

‘ Halt of the mentors hed sendy Dente. AleeitaS ‘
abrogation of the “principte ‘oF

free enterprise. Quebec, under
the Lesage Government, approv-
ed it, but Premier Daniel John-
son has made it clear that while
he favors medicare in the long
run, he does not believe that
Quebec can afford universal
medicare now. He rejects the
federal attempt to dictate in a
field of provincial jurisdiction.
Premier John Robarts believes
that there are prior needs that
should be met before universal
medicare is introduced.”

The editorial goes on to de-
mand that medicare not be en-
acted until a full study of federal
and provincial taxation is com-
pleted. This, of course, means

postponing medicare almost in- -

definitely, because the Globe and
Mail is convinced that such a
study will prove that Canada
cannot afford it.

The Globe and Mail has

TORY FULTON
“has other priorities”

but Parliament
will meet again
some sunny day

made up its mind and one can
thus assume that the Conserva-
tive Party has made up its mind,
as well as powerful elements
among the Liberals, such as
Finance Minister Mitchell Sharp,
who more and more appears to
be pulling the financial strings
as well as the strings on our
puppet prime minister.

Calling on the provincial pre-
miers to obstruct the medicare

plan during the coming federal-

provincial meet, the Globe and
Mail declares that “Medicare is

not yet legislation.”

The Canadian people should
also remember this fact, and use
the summer recess to put the
heat on members of the House,
so that when Parliament meets
again they'll move swiftly and
decisively to bring in a national
medicare scheme—now.

An inspiration
and a caution

This year is the 350th anniver-
sary of the great writer, Cervan-
tes. The following article is writ-
ten_as‘a tribute,

By L. PINSKY.
‘MONG the ecountions

world’s literature there are
a few who stand out like stars
of the first magnitude. Here, we
find the immortal Don Quixote
side by side with Prometheus,
Hamlet and Faust in life situa-
tions which eternally repeat
themselves and are eternally
topical.

A symbol of human society in
its struggle for a life worthy of
man, these characters serve as
an inspiration, a reminder and
a caution.

Who has not read Don Qui-
xote? Yet how many of us re-
member all of its episodes and
can retell the plot?

But that is not the important
thing. Behind all the episodes
of the novel, behind all the ad-
ventures of the Knight of the
Woeful Countenance, there
stands a situation which con-
stantly repeats itself, a type, the
“quixotic.”

“Every man is a bit of a Don
Quixote,” wrote V. Belinsky, the

Russian literary critic of the-

19th century, “but most of all,
the men with an ardent imagi-
nation and a loving spirit, yet
lacking common ‘sense and a

~geters depicted “in the”

feeling for reality. That is why
there is so much of the comic —
in them, and the comic is _s0
sad ‘that it evokes laughter
airouph tears,”

and extremist views of the char-
acter of Don Quixote. One of

these other views is the roman-
tic apology (which contains 4

decidedly pessimistic note) that
identifies quixoticism with genu-

ine heroism.

Cervantes’ novel (part 1, 1605;
part 2, 1615) was written at the
close of the, Renaissance, when
fundamental changes were tak-
ipg place in European civiliza-
tion.

The soil that nurtured the pro-
foundly national and universal
image of Don Quixote was the
deep national crisis in Spain at
that time and also the Euro-
pean crisis of humanist thought
clashing with the conditions
brought in by the burgeoning
bourgeois society.

Faith in man’s tremendous
potentialities, a deep undef-
standing of the determinativé
role of circumstances in practi-
cal activity, a lofty humanism
and sober realism merge in thé

immortal laughter of the genius

of Spanish literature.

Each society and each age re-
discovers for itself the eternally
life-like situations recorded by
Cervantes.

July 29, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4

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