Campbell's Propaganda Machine Rolls On
Today amid a subdued audience, Premier Gordon Campbell announced the start of a process his government is calling the B.C. Conversation on Health. The home page for this initiative states:
We need the Conversation on Health because British Columbians can â and must â find ways of making our health system sustainable for the future. We face many challenges as our population ages and new technologies and treatments are introduced.
Weâre opening the floor to all British Columbians. We need you involved. We need a serious discussion of health so we can solve these challenges.
Apparently a serious discussion
doesn’t mean a truthful discussion, for on the page entitled Health by Numbers, Campbell’s new web site replays the same falsehood Carole Taylor pushed out last week to a largely sleepy press corps:
- 43% â the percentage of total government spending that goes to health care this year
- 70% â the potential percentage of total government spending that health care could consume by 2017
As journalist Will McMartin has already shown (Carole Taylor’s False Alarm, The Tyee), Campbell and Taylor are using an inconsistent set of numbers to portray health care spending increases in an inappropriately alarming light. Other than using the phrase “could consume”, it doesn’t appear that Campbell’s government is even ashamed to have been caught at the outset of “the conversation” trying to push the debate along a certain path.
What’s the point of engaging in a discussion on health care with you Mr. Premier, if straight out of the gate you are using falsehoods as propaganda to colour the conversation?