LibertasPost

In their August 21st editorial "Locked and Loaded", the Edmonton Journal's editorial board argues that America's ongoing healthcare debate leaves Canadians two reasons to feel superior.

First, Americans are not only flat out rejecting Canada's model of healthcare, they are "misrepresenting" it as socialized medicine.

Second, some protesters of President Obama's proposal to introduce a public health insurance option are publicly carrying loaded weapons.

Canadians have many reasons for preferring our country to the United States, including our less corrupt legal system, our constitutional monarchy, our more tolerant history, our humble foreign policy, our lower level of regulation, our greater decentralization of power, the French language, etc. However, our healthcare system and our firearms policy are far worse than their American equivalents.

Unlike the American healthcare system, our healthcare system is an affront to human dignity. This is because its outcomes suggest that pet life is more valuable than human life.

In Alberta, those among us who bark and poop on the lawn can have any procedure within a week or two.

But those of us who can compose a symphony or design a skyscraper wait between 6 months and 3 years for a specialist procedure.

Worse still, if you are a sick child – a sick child – you might be treatedin a tent on the lawn over at the University of Alberta. The reason animals receive prompt care and humans languish on waiting lists is that the human part of our system is socialist – government has amonopoly on the means of healthcare production – and as such it suffers from a knowledge problem in the allocation of resources that results in widespread shortages.

Now, just because our system is immoral that does not make the American system perfect – far from it.

Some estimates suggest 45 million Americans have no insurance. Even so, these individuals receive better care than publicly insured Canadians.

To understand how, think about Alberta’s private dental care system. An uninsured individual like me can obtain any procedure in a couple weeks at most.

Because I am poor, the dentist will offer me lower cost procedures and sometimes a discount.

Healthcare in the U.S. works in much the same manner.

Of course, this private model can leave individuals with large medical bills, but large medical bills are far better than suffering or, as our Supreme Court notes, sometimes dying on a waiting list.

Further, it is not only the Americans that rightly reject our healthcare system – so does every major country in Europe. All of them have parallel private, two-tier systems of medicine and none of them are considering moving to Canada's Marxist model of pure government delivery.

On the gun issue, the Americans are also correct.

The purpose of firearms policy in a free country is primarily to guard civil liberty against tyranny, not to allow recreation within the boundaries of public safety.

The reason public safety arguments have resonance in our country is that we are repeatedly told by the members of our illiberal social democratic ruling class that American values include a right to bear arms and Canadian values do not.

This is historically inaccurate. When the American passed their Bill of Rights, which includes the right to bear arms, they were reaffirming the traditional British liberties listed in English Bill of Rights, which include the right to keep arms for defence.

The English Bill of Rights is part of Canada’s legal tradition and at the time of Confederation our founders were keen to protect the traditional British liberties found in it.

In fact, they chose British institutions because they felt America was too egalitarian and not concerned enough with the British liberties that originally inspired the American Revolution.

A famous line from a famous speech by Richard Cartwright during our founding debates is “I own frankly I prefer British liberty to American equality.”

Further, in 1868, Parliament established the Dominion Rifle Association so that well-armed Canadian citizens could protect the nation from American incursions.

The Americans, by contrast, only founded the NRA in 1871. In fact, it was not until 1977, that self-defence stopped being alegal reason to purchase a firearm in Canada.

As Canadians, we should be proud of our nation and know that we live in the better half of North America.

But our healthcare system and our firearms policy, which are relatively new in our history, stand as two reasons for preferring United States.

They are shameful.