The protest that wasn t REGINA. JULY 11, 1962. Things couldn’t be much worse. The doctors refuse to care for the sick or obey the new medical health care law. The government has the legal right to force them to—but doesn’t want to do something that will turn the public against Medicare before it gets started. Each side thinks the public is on their side. Neither has dared test it—until today. Those determined to block Medicare have called a rally for noon. Everyone is on edge. The Regina police force has been beefed up. A front page headline in the daily newspaper reads: “Mayor’s plea / Don’t fight!” Seven United Church ministers make a public appeal for people not to act in ways that seek to “circumvent normal processes of democratic government.” THE PROTEST FIZZLES. Barely 4,000 people show up. If they are angry, it doesn’t show. One newspaper headline reads: “Regina’s Protest Rally ‘Like a Country Fair’.” Everyone knows the worst is over. The doctors start to drift back to work. There are no more public confrontations. On July 23 the doctors and the government announce an end to their dispute. The long march to Medicare is over in Saskatchewan. It is one giant step closer for the rest of Canada.
The police were watching Woodrow, they were watching his kids. They were keeping an eye on our house. We began to get a kind of a sense that this was a struggle of Homeric proportions and that we were by no means sure of winning it. • ALLAN BLAKENEY Provincial treasurer in 1962 and later provincial Premier The passionate debate and the nature of the debate—the substance and weight of it—tipped the scales very significantly in my mind toward the NDP as it subsequently came to be known. • ROY ROMANOW Head of Canada’s Commission on the Future of Health Care and former Premier of Saskatchewan The doctors and their more fanatical backers turned out to be their own worst enemies. Their attacks on the bill, on Premier Lloyd, and on the few doctors who continued to provide services grew more wild and hysterical. Their posters that caricatured CCF leaders as Nazis and communists, and their burning of effigies of Tommy Douglas, disgusted many more people than they pleased. • ED FINN journalist
www.nupge.ca Politics in Saskatchewan by Normand Ward and Spafford Duff Published by: Longman’s Canada Ltd., 1968 Woodrow: A Biography of W.S. Lloyd by Dianne Lloyd Published by: Woodrow Lloyd Memorial Fund, 1979 The Making of a Socialist: The Recollections of T.C. Douglas Edited by Lewis H. Thomas. Published by: University of Alberta Press, 1982
A great day for us! It’s Sunday, July 1, 1962. In Saskatchewan, the CCF government of Woodrow Lloyd makes history. It activates the Medical Health Care Act. It is liberation day for every man, woman and child in the province. All are freed from the fear of not being able to pay for the medical care they or their loved ones may one day need. The new law makes it possible for them to look out for one another: each paying their fair share in taxes; all able to get the best care possible if ever they need it. There is one problem: the insurance companies. They are giant corporations. They rake in millions from selling medical insurance. The Saskatchewan plan will reduce those profits. Worse still, it could spread to the rest of Canada and even the USA. The companies are not about to sit idly by and let one of their best profit centres slip from their grasp. They determine to smother Medicare in its cradle. The companies enlist the Saskatchewan doctors to be their frontline fighters. Most are more than willing. They refuse to provide any care under the terms of the new law. They close their offices. They break the law. They become outlaws. It is the most direct and brazen challenge to the rule of law in Canada since the 1885 Riel/ Dumont Rebellion. The doctors expect massive popular support. There is none. They hold out for 23 days—but it’s no use. The people have made up their minds: they want what they voted for. They want Medicare. It is a great day for Medicare, a great day for democracy, a great day for us!
Medicare keeps the promise of democracy DEMOCRACY doesn’t promise us happiness. It only promises us the freedom to pursue our own happiness. Sickness and injury can limit or deny that pursuit. Thus helping people stay and get healthy is a priority for anybody committed to real democracy. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was always committed to real democracy. So, when this home-grown political party of farmers and other working folks won election in the Saskatchewan provincial election of 1944, they soon started on the long march to Medicare. First came the provincial air ambulance service in 1946. Next, pensioners and their dependants got free medical, dental, hospital and drug services. Then, all citizens were
entitled to cancer treatment for free. In 1947 the Saskatchewan Hospitalization Plan was created to provide hospital care to all Saskatchewan citizens for a small annual fee. The progress continued for 15 years.
The doctors don’t care. They don’t care about the election. They don’t care about the will of the people. They don’t care about the law. They are determined to block a public medical care plan. They decide to hold the people hostage. They close their offices and refuse all services except at designated temporary clinics.
The doctors dilemma
By the end of their fourth term the CCF was ready for the final step. Premier Tommy Douglas went on the radio to announce plans to introduce “a scheme of medical care insurance” should the government win re-election in 1960. It did.
Democracy be damned WOODROW Lloyd is as good as his word. He had run on the Douglas promise of medical care insurance, now elected Premier with an increased majority, he intends to deliver. The Medical Health Care bill is passed and will come into force on July 1, 1962. It requires all doctors in the province to participate.
THE DOCTORS claim the medical health care law denies them their democratic rights to practice medicine any way they like. Their dilemma is that wanting to have it all their way disregards the will of the majority, disregards democracy. This contradiction becomes the focus of the dispute. All the provincial newspapers back the doctors. So does the Canadian Medical Association and the whole Canadian medical establishment. But the source of the doctors’ strongest support is unseen and secret. It comes from giant American insurance companies—ready to do what they must to stop anything that will reduce present or future profits.
Those opposed to Medicare support the Keep Our Doctors Committee. The KOD launches a propaganda blitz claiming mass popular dissatisfaction with the government. There is little proof. The KOD promotes, then cancels, a “car cavalcade” to protest the law. They decide the showdown will be a “mass protest rally” at the provincial legislature. The Lloyd government plays it smart. They don’t panic. They don’t bully. If the doctors want to be an immoveable object, the government will be an irresistible force.
More and more irresistible THE GOVERNMENT recruits doctors from outside the province to provide the medical care the Saskatchewan doctors refuse to. Hundreds respond. Most come from England. Forty-three arrive before the crisis is over. The Saskatchewan doctors retaliate. They use their College of Physicians and Surgeons to harass three doctors: one from Ireland, one from England and one from Florida. They give the American doctor 24 hours to get out of Saskatchewan.
The government appoints a one-person commission of inquiry to assess the appropriateness of the College’s actions. They want to be sure the College is not using its powers as an “offensive weapon against doctors who are not supporting the College’s walkout.” POPULAR SUPPORT for not-for-profit medical care bursts out. A citizens’ group in Prince Albert sets up a clinic staffed by two doctors, two nurses, a lab technician and three clerks. People in Saskatoon set up a clinic staffed by two women doctors. The newspapers insist on characterizing one as: “a housewife for the past four years.” In Biggar, 350 families pay $40,000 in subscriptions to start a clinic where doctors work under the medicare plan.
An idea whose time has come THE MOVE TO block Medicare is not popular anywhere. Women picket the Canadian Medical Association offices in Toronto and Montreal. In Quebec, 24 wellknown public figures condemn the doctors for their desire “to stand above the law.” The Quebec group
includes: professor Jacques Parizeau; Gerard Pelletier, editor-in-chief of La Presse; novelist Hugh MacLennan; and Eric Kierans, president of the Montreal Stock Exchange. The Canadian Labour Congress calls the doctors’ defiance of the law “a mutiny.” In Ottawa, a group of 30 professors at Carleton University criticize the doctors for their “willful disregard for democratic government.” An editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mail notes: “What applies to truckers and seamen applies equally to doctors. None has the right to set himself above the law.”
Ready for a showdown IT IS WEEK TWO of the doctors’ walkout. The KOD is still confident it can win. They promote a mass protest rally in front of the legislature for Wednesday, July 11. The KOD predicts at least 20,000 outraged citizens will attend. They believe they can topple the bill, if not the government. Many believe it. Saskatchewan seems to be teetering on the brink of complete civil unrest.
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