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If you ever doubt that beautiful words on paper can mask grim realities, look no further than the Canada Health Act. Not unlike the grand, empty promises of the former Soviet Union’s constitution, our national health care legislation offers noble principles and inspiring intent — and then folds under the weight of its own implementation, especially here in Manitoba.

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The Canada Health Act spells out a system that should be the envy of the world. It promises access for all Canadians, sets high standards, and insists that nothing should come between you and the health care you need. In theory, it should be our crowning achievement.

But ask any Manitoban who has spent endless hours trapped in the purgatory of a Winnipeg emergency room, or waited months for a crucial MRI: these promises teeter between fiction and farce. Our strictly government-run health system has failed to live up to its federal billing. In truth, the experience borders on comic absurdity — if only real Manitobans weren’t suffering and paying with their health.

Back in the Soviet era, there was a joke making the rounds about scarcity. A desperate customer enters a state-run shop in Moscow and asks to buy some fish. “Sorry,” says the clerk, “this is the butcher, where we have no meat. Across the street is the fishmonger, where they have no fish.”

Here in Winnipeg, try strolling into a city hospital and asking for well-timed emergency care, or a timely MRI. You might as well be in Moscow in the 1980s trying to order fish at the butcher. It’s just not on offer.

A recent report from the Montreal Economic Institute confirms what every Manitoban already knows: our health care system is failing by nearly every metric that matters. This isn’t just theory or political mudslinging — there is measurable proof, lived out every day by the people cooling their heels........

© Winnipeg Sun