PARLIAMENT HILL—Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as president of the right-wing National Citizens Coalition in 1999, endorsed a proposal for a separate private health insurance system in Canada as a “workable solution” for rising costs and problems with medicare.

Mr. Harper made the written comment—calling medicare a “government-controlled health care monopoly”—two years after the former president of the NCC, David Somerville, called for an end to the Canada Health Act, which gives the federal government the power to enforce medicare principles across the country and ensure the provincial governments, responsible for delivering health care, comply.

The Liberal Party on Monday retracted portions of an election campaign ad that had attributed the call for an end to the Canada Health Act to Mr. Harper. The Conservatives accused the Liberals of purposefully misquoting the Prime Minister, because they had already attributed the statement to Mr. Somerville, in a 2004 election campaign ad.

The Liberals acknowledged later Monday the statement came from Mr. Somerville, published in a June 1997 NCC newsletter when Mr. Somerville was the group’s president and Mr. Harper its vice-president. But the Liberal campaign insisted that Mr. Harper has indicated in past statements he supports Mr. Somerville’s view.

A search of a Library of Parliament news database found a 1999 quotation from Mr. Harper in the Saint John Times Globe, now the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal, among one of several reviews of a scathing book on the Canadian health system by University of Manitoba medical student David Gratzer. In the final chapter of Code Blue: Reviving Canada’s Health Care System, Mr. Gratzer recommends a form of private medical savings accounts for employees, combined with a separate insurance plan for catastrophic medical situations, that had become popular in the United States. He appears to set out a system similar generally to the U.S., where a basic public system serves as a net for individuals who cannot afford private insurance or do not have employer-paid insurance.

“Gratzer proposes a workable solution for the biggest public policy problem of the coming generation—our government-controlled health care monopoly,” Mr. Harper said in comments that are quoted on the back cover of the book. “Our health care isn’t just sick, it’s killing people. Canada needs Gratzer’s new prescription.”

David Frum, a conservative author and columnist who was also a speech writer for former U.S. president George W. Bush, also reviewed the book. His comments are quoted on the back cover, lauding Mr. Gratzer and saying that "Canada needs this book."

Mr. Gratzer also quotes Mr. Harper inside the book regarding problems with the health-care system and medicare: “We are seeing now only the tip of the iceberg.”

Mr. Gratzer writes that Mr. Harper was referring to the problems the health system faced with an aging population.

The author of the newspaper article about Mr. Gratzer’s book, Charles W. Moore, also quoted Mr. Harper’s reference to the “tip of the iceberg,” but quoted him further in the same paragraph. “Canadian politicians can bluster against the bogeyman of ‘two-tier health care,’ but all the bluster in the world won’t stop what’s left of the present system from crumbling around their ears,” Mr. Moore quoted Mr. Harper as saying.

It is unclear whether Mr. Moore was quoting an earlier manuscript of the book, since the “iceberg” reference was the same as the book, or whether he had interviewed Mr. Harper after the book was published, when Mr. Harper might have referred to parallel health care systems, one private and one public and normally referred to as a two-tier system.

A spokesperson for the Conservative Party’s campaign headquarters said Mr. Harper has been clear through the past two elections and this one that he supports the Canada Health Act. Spokesperson Mike White pointed out the Conservative government has increased cash transfers to the provinces to fund health care and the party has promised to increase transfers—as have the Liberals and the NDP—by six per cent a year through the renewal of the current federal-provincial transfer agreement after 2014.

“He actually has a record of action in government on health care. He’s run to be Prime Minister on a number of occasions. The Liberals brought up all kinds of quotes to scare people in 2004, they tried again in 2006, he was elected in 2006 and 2008 as Prime Minister on a platform to maintain transfers, and he has done so,” said Mr. White.

He noted the Liberal government under former prime minister Jean Chrétien and then finance minister Paul Martin, later prime minister, slashed health and social cash transfers to the provinces in the mid-1990s as its main strategy for eliminating the federal deficit.

A former colleague of Mr. Harper’s at the National Citizens Coalition said Mr. Harper grew to have more influence than his title of vice-president might have implied after he resigned as an MP in 1997 to join the right-wing lobby group. Mr. Harper replaced Mr. Somerville as president of the National Citizens Coalition—founded by the owner of an insurance company to oppose medicare—in January 1998.

“He was kind of like one of the staff members, he would come to meetings and we would talk about strategy, he would put his ideas forward, and as time went on he took over more responsibilities from David,” Gerry Nicholls, NCC director at the time, told The Hill Times. “He was the one making the ultimate decisions for some of the things we did, say June or July of '97, but until then, he was like staff, you know he helped us develop ad strategy, plot what we were going to be doing, he wrote things for us and that kind of stuff.”

Mr. Harper has an article in the same June 1997 edition of the NCC’s newsletter, The Bulldog, that the Conservatives say quotes Mr. Somerville, not Mr. Harper as calling for an end to the Canada Health Act.

tnaumetz@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times