A US group, Americans for Prosperity has been running a 1.8 million dollar ad against US health care reform on US television. One of their TV ads has featured Canadian Shona Holmes telling Americans she would have died from wait time if she couldn’t have gone to the US.
What many Canadians don’t know is that Ms. Holmes has a lawsuit against the Ontario government, which has not been filed to recoup 100 thousand dollars for her 2005 trips to the Mayo clinics to remove a Rathke’s Cleft cyst.,
The suit is also a challenge to single tier care and the Canadian health system. She is one of two plaintiffs, the handlers behind it are The Canadian Constitution Federation headed by John Carpay.
Ontario Superior Court September 2007 (.pdf)
After doing the commercial and a talk show circuit in the US Shona Holmes publicist told CBC News, she was now declining interviews.
Who is the Canadian group Shona Holmes has partnered with to challenge Canadian health care?
The Canadian Constitution Federation is a registered charity, featured in a 2007 article in The Toronto Star: Keeping some advocacy groups out of court
May 11, 2009 Terrible Depths
In this morning’s Globe and Mail, there’s an op-ed by John Carpay, the executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, in which he argues that “Quebec’s parents have lost the freedom to choose religious education.” Carpay’s reasoning? The provincial government has mandated a new course called “Ethics and Religious Culture,” to be taught in all public and private schools. Carpay’s foundation is assisting parents in a court challenge of the new course, arguing that it has stripped away their previous power to choose with their children would receive “Catholic, Protestant, or non-religious moral instruction.”…
Oddly enough, the “religious” objection to the new course is probably criticizing what the drafters in the education ministry thought was its greatest strength: that it is “nebulous” and inconclusive in moral instruction, offering great leeway for schools to structure their presentation and for students to make up their own minds. The other criticism – that it is “superficial and very limited” – is, well, pretty much what you’d expect from any high school-level survey course. Be serious; this isn’t grad school here. Anyway, the combination of limited and vague presentation, according to Carpay, makes the curriculum “anti-religious.”…
Carpay is an old Reform Party candidate who moved over to the Alberta branch of the Canadian Taxpayer Federation (CTF provincial directors are, more often than not, retired conservative politicians and party staffers) and then took up the reins at the Canadian Constitution Foundation a couple of years ago. Aside from the Foundation, you can find also his musings at right-wing hangouts like the Frontier Centre, the Fraser Institute, the Canada Family Action Coalition, and the Manning Centre’s journal, C2C. (That Carpay’s columns, which explicitly identify him as speaking for the Constitution Foundation, would be reproduced in CFAC newsletters seems like it might be a little bit at odds with the Foundation’s formal position that it has no opinion on abortion per se, but whatever.)
The Foundation was founded in 2002 by John Weston, a Conservative MP in Vancouver – its first task was to oppose the Nisga’a Treaty, but it subsequently branched out to oppose public healthcare…
The Constitution Foundation is also backed by another pro-corporate “charity,” the Weston Foundation
Used by permission. 2009 Terrible Depths
Who is blogging about this?
a creative revolution: Shona Holmes: “Charity” funded in her quest to take away your health care? Update.
unrepentant old hippie: Shona Holmes, Sex Advisor
The Nexus of Assholery: Headhunting for Shona Holmes
Beyond the 140: 33.7 million Canadians are not Shona Holmes
Bouquets of Gray: More on Shona Holmes
Sandwalk: Shona Holmes and Canadian Health Care
She lied about the brain tumour, and it was not life threatening.
As someone who has worked as an advocate in dealing with issues relative to HIV, and in partnerships with other patients groups, I’ve had a pretty good look at what works well in Ontario/Canada, and what doesn’t.
My friend with brain cancer was in the hospital and operated on and out in ten days at St. Michael’s, and get’s world class care at Princess Margaret.
I wish they’d get his story out.
As someone living with HIV, I’ve had the best health care, access to the doctors I’ve needed. Granted with Trillium, there is much room for improvement. The recent reforms with the province, tendering for bulk generic drug purchases, dealing with pharmacies getting kick backs from the generic industry, getting section 8s removed among other things has been better, but not perfect.
My private insurance gives me immediate access to most everything I need, where as Trillium wouldn’t.
I’d rather try to fix our system, than their which is corrupt by incredible money, and industry power of the quid quo pro.
But would someone expose this woman for who she is. She’s on record stating she had a “cyst” and that is was easier to say tumour, and neglects to say it was not a life threatening condition that did not require immediate attention.
The course actually sounds like a good idea if it’s a straight-forward survey of various theologies and ideologies; it is something that kids in an increasingly secular Quebec could use. However, I’d have to see the fine print before I’d sign off on it; it would be interesting to see Mr Carpay did.
It’s interesting that his outfit is the Constitution Federation; our hard-right paleoconservative party in the US is the Constitution Party. Usually, it seems that it’s the left in Canada that wants to stick to the Constitution and the right who’s looking to use the Notwithstanding Clause to end-run Supreme Court rulings they don’t like.
Shona Holmes misrpresents Canada.
Petition to have Shona Holmes Canadian citizenship revoked!!!!
[...] West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea-to-Sky’s John Weston, By Vancouver Sun, October 16, 2008 8. Shona Holmes and The Canadian Constitution Federation, By Bene Diction, Religious Right Alert, August 2, [...]