March 5, 2002

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Attention: Assignment Editors

Toronto - At a press conference today, the Ontario Health Coalition unveiled a massive grassroots campaign to save Canada's public Medicare system from privatization. The coalition announced that organizing meetings are being held in communities across the province to plan for a province-wide door-to-door campaign. To date, twenty-seven cities have joined the campaign and others are expected to follow shortly.

The campaign will take place as Roy Romanow, chair of the Commission on the Future of Public Health Care in Canada is travelling across the country to conduct public hearings. Mr. Romanow has said "everything is on the table" and has laid out several options, some that respect the values of the Canada Health Act - public funding & administration, universality, comprehensiveness, portability and accessibility - and others that would erode those principles through increased out-of-pocket charges and for-profit health care. Organizers hope to send a clear message to Mr. Romanow and provincial and federal politicians that the principles of the Canada Health Act should anchor and guide a revitalized public Medicare system in Canada.

During the door-to-door canvass, community members will be asked to hang up a red ribbon to show our support for a National Public Medicare system. Organizers expect to get ribbons out on trees and front doors across the province. "A great deal of fear-mongering has been done by representatives of the for-profit health industry in an attempt to undermine the overwhelming public support for Medicare", stated Derek Chadwick, coalition representative. "These dire warnings and PR campaigns are coming from the same people who fought public Medicare in the first place because they stand to profit from its privatization. Canadians didn't fall for it the first time around. We are confident that we can do it again."

Added coalition co chair Irene Harris, "Medicare is the greatest social transfer Canadians ever built together. The future sustainability of Medicare requires public control and an assurance that public funding goes to patients not profits. We are asking Ontarians to look to the future and to join us in the appeal to revitalize and modernize Medicare based on the wisdom of the core values and principles that have served us so well."

Volunteers will start going door-to-door on April 24. The canvass will culminate in a National Medicare Day to be held in communities across the country on May 15.

Click Here For a List of Local Coalitions
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