Danielle Smith of the Wildrose Party has been quoted extensively talking about health care in the Edmonton Journal and Globe and Mail, among others. The Wildrose is running on a platform of creating a two-tiered system of health care in Canada. They claim that offering private health care creates more options, reduces wait times and protects and strengthens public health care. Each one of these points is false and not backed by evidence from the science and health research community. I'm going to attempt to separate myth from fact in the paragraphs below. I hope you'll read more.

Myth: Private care reduces wait times

In the early morning hours of Monday, January 16, as the sun rose on a fresh snow-covered ground, I, along with Canada's premiers, watched as 15 bright umbrellas came bobbing around the Victoria harbour. Fifteen youth activists representing Students for Medicare, Canadian Doctors for Medicare, British Columbia Health Coalition, HIV/AIDS organizations, GLBTQ rights organizations and more "braved the elements" (as the Globe and Mail reported) to send a message to premiers that medicare has got you covered.

As many of you have likely seen, read or heard, the Council of the Federation -- which is made up of the first ministers from each province and territory -- met in Victoria, B.C. to discuss the 2014 health care accord and hopefully find common ground on their response to the federal government's unilateral move on financing the Canada Health Transfer.

Maude and I found ourselves beside Christy Clark in the middle of a media scrum when she announced optimistically that the first ministers had made some progress finding a common ground. What they did agree on was that the actions of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty in late December were "unprecedented and unacceptable" but it sounds like that was about it -- according to Alberta's Premier Alison.

Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow, health-care campaigner Adrienne Silnicki and organizing assistant Ava Waxman are in Victoria demanding a Canada health accord that defends and expands public health care.

So here we are in sunny and snowy (which is rare, I'm told) Victoria, B.C. for the Council of the Federation meeting. The first ministers from across Canada are arriving in Victoria tonight and tomorrow morning to discuss the 2014 health-care accord and likely decide what their response is going to be to a federal government who is calling for accountability in health care from the provinces but walking away from their own responsibilities.

This morning Maude, Ava (B.C. Regional Office) and I joined with pro-medicare allies and Health Care Critic Libby Davies at a roundtable conference on health care.

Well, I'm sure you read about it in the papers, or heard it in the news. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty handed the provincial finance ministers a deal outlining the federal government's contribution to health care for the next 10 years. No discussion was held among the ministers, the plan was not open to negotiation. Instead, the "deal" was unilaterally decided by the federal government and handed to the provinces in an excellent display of authoritarian rule.

As Christmas presents go, this one was a shocker: Over lunch on Monday, cash-strapped Finance Minister Jim Flaherty promised provincial and territorial finance ministers he'd increase federal funding for health care by six per cent each year for the next five years. No strings attached. No negotiations. A done deal. With a catch.

The provinces and territories have five years to figure out how to make health care sustainable on their own terms, every premier for himself. After that, the Harper government will contribute less, tying federal contributions to the growth in the economy, with a floor of three per cent.

During the recent election, the Liberals got into trouble for wrongly attributing a statement undermining public health care to Prime Minister Steven Harper. The Conservatives reacted with indignation and, in the back and forth that followed, avoided the question of Harper's position on medicare entirely. But Steven Harper has a long record of opposition to public health care and support of private health services that has been well documented.