Jack Layton Is Nothing Different Than The Rest


Julian Wolfe
April 18th, 2011


NDP Leader Jack Layton raises his mug of beer with his sister Nancy while watching the first period of the Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins game on television in a sports bar in Montreal, Thursday, April 14, 2011. (Jacques Boissinot / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Jack Layton is travelling coast to coast to coast attacking his opposition concerning healthcare and a wide variety of issues, but it turns out that Layton isn’t so clean when it comes to honesty and healthcare himself. While he claims that he stands by Tommy Douglas and the public healthcare system, he slapped it in the face in the 1990s. 

 

Jack Layton says that he wants to change Canada. He claims that the Liberals and Conservatives are same old, same old and that he offers something better. He will defend our healthcare system to the brink and do Tommy Douglas proud. Reverse that thought, did he really say that he would defend our healthcare system? He did. While that is all fine and dandy, in the 1990s, he slapped public healthcare in the face by using a private clinic to get surgery.

In the Toronto suburb of Thornhill, Layton went to the Shouldice Hospital, a private facility, for hernia surgery. Layton defended himself claiming that he didn’t know the place was privately owned.

He said in an article on CTV during the 2006 election:

“It’s just part of the system. The doctor says, ‘Go there.’ You pay with your (Ontario health) card. It never occurred to me (it was) anything other than Medicare, which it is.

I can tell you now if my doctor ever refers me anywhere, I’ll ask him that question. It never occurred to me at the time, it wasn’t a controversy at the time. It wasn’t something on one’s mind.”

For a man who claims to be the defender of public healthcare, Layton should have known better than to go to a private hospital. The word ‘pay’ shouldn’t even be an operative in that statement if he was so innocent.

From coast to coast to coast, Layton uses Tommy Douglas’s name in vain. How shameful is that Jack Layton?

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   Categories: Election, Healthcare, Layton, NDP

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