October 23, 2004
Copps challenged
The Toronto Star's Susan Delacourt is skeptical of the allegations in Sheila Copps's Worth Fighting For:
Booksellers may be thinking about moving Sheila Copps' new book from non-fiction to the fiction shelves today in light of seriously flawed "revelations" about how the former deputy prime minister thwarted a Paul Martin plot to kill the Canada Health Act in 1995.
[...]
But Copps' version of events don't match up with anyone else's memory of those times — or, more significantly, a record of the 1995 budget-making process more rigorously recounted in Edward Greenspon and Anthony Wilson-Smith's book, Double Vision. That account, which seems to have come in part from Copps herself, shows that she did indeed get involved in the cause of health in the 1995 budget, but not to the radically skewed degree she has described in her own new book — and not in any serious way at odds with Martin, then finance minister.
As Double Vision describes it, Copps only got involved after the budget was released in February, 1995 — not before, as her book argues. It was about two weeks after the historic budget had been tabled and there was haggling over the bill to implement the budget.
"... Sheila Copps took a closer look at the legislation that would turn the budget into law. It almost left her speechless — no mean feat. Perusing the section on the new block transfer, called the Canada Social Transfer, she concluded that the principles of the Canada Health Act, to be embedded in the new bill, had been significantly watered down in the drafting process," the book says.
Diane Marleau, the MP from Sudbury who was then the federal health minister, recalled yesterday that yes, she and Copps were upset about how the word "health" had been left out of the name of the new transfer and they worked hard to get the legislation changed — in concert with Martin.
"Sheila was a lot of help to me at that point," Marleau said. "If anyone would have been looking out to make sure the CHA was protected, it would have been me."
Double Vision describes how Martin eventually got Copps on the phone to make sure she was satisfied with how the legislation was being changed to take Marleau's concerns into account.
They actually had to take two cracks at changing the transfer's name because the first suggestion: the Canada Social and Health Transfer, translated into the acronym CSHT and that would lead to unfortunate, indelicate pronunciation.
Marleau said yesterday that every bit of that tale is true. "I feel bad for Sheila doing this, because I really do like her ... but she's just got it wrong."
A politician using her autobiography to take credit for things she didn't do? I'm shocked!
Posted by damian at October 23, 2004 07:47 AM