Amir Attaran (@email hidden; JavaScript is required)@profamirattaran April 7, 2023:
What chutzpah! The Canadian Constitution Foundation’s attempt to kill public health care FAILED at the Supreme Court, but they’re still fundraising for the legal challenge. https://theccf.ca/yourhealthcantwait/donate/
I’m pretty horrified that @CBCNews and @globeandmail are writing about Dr. Brian Day’s court defeat, without mentioning that the trial judge found he tinkered with expert witnesses. Why treat him as credible?
… I think public health care dodged a bullet. I long worried this legal challenge might have succeeded,
I worried for years toobut it didn’t mostly because the lawyers behind it played some astonishingly inept cards at trial. A talentless bunch. Lucky thing, too.
Narcissistic doctor whines that the Supreme Court “don’t want to even listen to an argument when [there is] a similar case they heard and ruled on”.
Um, sure. That’s what lawyers call “precedent”.
Supreme Court declines to hear B.C. doctor’s fight to let patients pick private health care
Pro tip: if you’re a lawyer making a closing argument, don’t use evidence that the judge already ruled inadmissible. …
Amir Attaran (@email hidden; JavaScript is required)@profamirattaran Sept 10 & 11, 2020:
This isn’t just a loss for the private, for-profits who attacked Canada’s Medicare. It’s a 3000 paragraph massacre by the judge who ruled against them on every single argument, in the least appealable way possible. Medicare is safe, safe, SAFE after this.Except fast forward to the public health destroying fucker truckers, opposing basic simple health protections in a pandemic, supported and enabled by politicos, notably Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, Danielle Smith, Scott Moe, etc, and social murdering health officials, especially evil – Bonnie Henry and Deena Hinshaw. I expect they’re being led by Canada-hating and public health-hating Steve Harper and his loonie trumpian-repuglican for private profit friends in the USA.
Here’s the pearl, the Holy Grail, the judge’s killer finding of fact that wrecks any chance of a successful appeal:Go to thread above, to read the excerpts from the ruling.
And where the lawyer for the plaintiffs, Peter Gall, QC, made a mess of it, and made a rotten case worse through his conduct.
Even funnier, the public face of this effort, Dr. Brian Day, who styled himself as a crusading hero, crookedly meddled with his witnesses, got caught, and torpedoed all their evidence. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
This case now becomes the model of how to waste millions of dollars on a complex Charter lawsuit, because the evidence was against you, your lawyer was boneheaded, and you tainted your own witnesses. Never seen anything like it.
A shout-out of thanks to the judge. Procedurally this was a horrendously protracted trial, just Dickensian, because the lawyers for the plaintiffs behaved (IMO) in a sloppy and obtuse way. Mr. Justice Steeves endured that. It cannot have been easy and he deserves a holiday.
So the right-wing funders of this case promise an appeal, and claim they’ll win because 75,000 patients died on waiting lists.
Just one problem: in court they couldn’t prove even one person died!
Liars can’t win an appeal by offering “alternative facts”.Supreme court of Canada Rosalie Abella smeared me with “alternate facts” pissing on me, my charter rights and our charter in her ruling in Ernst vs AER, and it appears another of our supreme court judges, Russell Brown makes up “facts” too.
https://mailchi.mp/theccf/canadia
A coda for Albertans:
The man who bankrolled and babysat this blundered attack on Medicare is @HowardAnglin, formerly of the Canadian Constitutional Foundation, but now Jason Kenney’s Principal Secretary.
So as Kenney rips at doctors, nurses and Medicare, guess who’s to blame.
Emilie Taman@EmilieTaman Sep 11, 2020 Replying to @profamirattaran
Ouch.
Amir Attaran (@email hidden; JavaScript is required)@profamirattaran Sep 12, 2020 Replying to
@EmilieTaman:
I am pleased to inform Alberta has hired Mr. Gall for its attack on the federal carbon price in the SCC.
Sasa V, NP(F) – Venerable Millennial@sashmaster Sep 11, 2020 Replying to @profamirattaran:
the lawyer was SLAYED here
A few comments to the Globe and Mail article:
Rob A, Van BC:
I don’t at ALL like nor do I buy into how Dr. Day tries to bolster his position that it’s somehow “altruistic” that those Canadians blessed with greater financial resources then other Canadians, absolutely should have a legal constitutional “altruistic” right then other Canadians NOT so financially blessed, to get faster privileged access to medically necessary healthcare at a much higher for-profit cost privately, despite the ruddy fact a majority of Canadians cannot PERIOD!!!! That being said, I’m ALL in if the private healthcare sector using solely the pay rates as established by & will be reimbursed by the publicly-funded medical system, may indeed be permitted to deliver private healthcare services open to ALL Canadians and if able to achieve greater efficiencies in how that healthcare gets delivered without ever compromising on its delivery/patient quality, and they manage to realize some degree of profitability, I’m perfectly okay with that PERIOD!!!!!
steve_d1:
Many of the comments seem perversely ideological to me… Such a number flipping their fingers at individuals with the common “why don’t you just go down to the states where they hate poor people“ and the like.
Of all the countries that provide a public system of healthcare delivery… Canada… Is the only western democracy that does not have a significantly mixed system of healthcare delivery… systems which include a mixture of public and private providers up to and including fully separate private options… Systems which often include medical practitioners working both inside and outside of the public system…
It is a rare thing in life… for the lone outsider… or the one outlier in the design and function of any complex system… doing things in a way that no one else does… To be found to be the optimal choice.
This issue… is about system design and system outcomes… not ideology
JJandreino:
Please deport Day from this country.
CitizenWhoPaysTaxesNotTaxpayer:
Brian Day is just a greedy guy who wants to make more money than he needs by destroying public health. I really don’t know why guys like him just don’t move to the US, why they want to destroy the Canadian medical system. The Canadian medical system has it’s issues and it needs tuned up but guys like Day just want to destroy it.
Refer also to: