“Time to build a tolerant society…»

We have far too many people without a roof over their head…….

A conversation with the Hon. Howard Hampton, MPP Leader of the New Democratic Party of Ontario.

By Thomas S. Saras                                                                                                   

Editor-In-Chief

Portrait of the politician

The Hon Howard Hampton, MPP, is the leader of the New Democratic Party of Ontario,(NDP), a position he has held since June 22, 1996.

Mr. Hampton acquired his taste for politics early as the son of a mill worker in a community where strong trade union principles prevailed. The member of Provincial Parliament for Rainy River was first elected in 1987. He has served as the Minister of Natural Resources from 1993 to 1995, and as Attorney General of Ontario from 1990 to 1993, in Ontario’s first NDP government.

Prior to serving as an elected member and Party Leader, Howard Hampton worked as a labour lawyer for the Canadian Labour Congress and in private practice in Fort Frances. He also worked for the Blakeney government in Saskatchewan, and as a teacher in southern and northern Ontario.

In law, Mr. Hampton focused on defending the rights of working people and getting management to play fair.

He earned his law degree from the University of Ottawa, his Bachelor of  Education degree from the University of Toronto and his Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

A gifted hockey player and a keen sportsman, Mr. Hampton is passionate about the importance of providing community activities for youth and equality public services for all.

Born in 1952, Howard is married to Sudbury East MPP Shelley Martel. They have two children, a daughter, Sarah, and a son, Jonathan.

 “What is happening is that many of the things that are wrong with the Conservative government’s agenda are now coming into full public view,” Howard Hampton

The Interview

T.S.:   As we are now in the year 2002, can you give our readers your views on the political realities? Given the fact that Ontario is now in the market for a new premier, what exactly does this mean to the taxpayer?

H.H.:   I think that we can all agree on the fact that the current Premier, Mike Harris, is retiring says something. I think that what it says is that both Mr. Harris and the Conservative Party recognize that he could not lead the conservatives into the next election. That too many of the projects that have gone wrong with the so-called Common Sense Revolution, have stuck with Mr. Harris; Walkerton, the death of seven people, the serious illness of over 2000 other people, all this from the fact that the province no longer regarded safe drinking water as a priority, this has really stuck to Mr. Harris and his government. The continuing problems in healthcare, such that close to 70% of people in Ontario now have serious concerns about our healthcare system has seriously stuck to Mr. Harris. The growing concern about education and what is happening in our elementary and secondary schools. We are seeing more students not doing as well as they should, we are seeing the dropout rate, particularly at the grade nine and ten levels increasing. I think what is happening is that many of the things that are wrong with the conservative government’s agenda are now coming into full public view. The conservatives hope that they can find a new leader. A new Premier who will put a different face on the government, a different image on the government because they recognize that if they cannot find a new image for the government they have no chance of winning the next election.

Q:       What do you, as a political party leader, think you will gain from these developments ?

A:         Well it is difficult to say when the next election will come, we could be into an election campaign in five or six months or we might not have an election for another 2 years. But I think as New Democrats, we will do well when the election will be called. This election will be about ideas. The election campaign is going to be about ideas which people do think are best for them, for their community and best for Ontario. People generally like the ideas that we put forward and most people in this province support the idea of a publicly funded, publicly administered healthcare system, medicare which  has been very much something that New Democrats have stood for first at the Provincial level, in fact we created Medicare first in Saskatchewan and then it moved into other provinces and then was implemented Federally. Our ideas about social justice, our ideas about affordable housing. People recognize that it is very difficult to take part in society, to hold down a job, to get an education, to organize your life unless you are able to have a roof over your head and there is truly an affordable housing problem out there. Our concern that minimum wage has been frozen for over six years and that the lowest paid people in the province are paid so little that it is very difficult for them to participate in the economy in any meaningful way. They just do not have the income. Our concern about the proposal to sell off our electricity system. Most people understand that privatizing and de-regulating what used to be Ontario Hydro, our electricity system. If you follow what happened in California or if you saw what happened in Alberta, it will mean very substantial price increases for individuals, for business and for industry. I think people recognize that could not possibly be good.

Q:       It seems that this game of privatization is becoming an international trend. In Europe they use exactly the same policies. It seems to me that there is a centralized body, which is planning this type of policies, and eventually being part of the international community we follow suit. If there is in reality such an agreement as I suspect, do you think you can object and refuse these plans?

A:         There is no agreement that forces us to sell off our electricity system. For example, the provinces of Quebec and Manitoba are both going to retain their electricity systems. Hydro Quebec will continue to be a public utility that provides electricity at cost, not at cost plus a 20% profit, but at cost to people. Manitoba Hydro will continue to be a public utility and continue to offer the lowest electricity prices in North America. There is nothing that is forcing us to sell off our electricity system and then be faced with the substantial price increases and the interruptions of electricity that you saw in California or the people have seen in New York. The people on Bay Street would like people to believe that, but in fact there is nothing that forces us to sell off our electricity system. In fact I think that it is a huge mistake, the fact that we have had an electricity system that has been dedicated to the consumer, the businesses and the industries of Ontario and it has been dedicated to providing us electricity at cost, has been one of the fundamental economic advantages, one of the biggest competitive advantages for Ontario’s economy and for Ontario’s industries. We should not give that away.

Q:       How can you stop this?

A:         Well, if enough people start thinking about this issue and become concerned about it and if enough people recognize that if they are paying $2000/year now for their electricity how will they be able to afford to pay $4000/year? If enough people think about what it means when factories have to lay off people or when factories have to close down production because they cannot afford the price of electricity any more. Then I would think it would be possible to get the public of Ontario to say, no, we do not want this. Right now I know that close to 70% of the people of Ontario think it is a very bad idea. They have watched what has happened in California and in Alberta and they have watched what has happened in New York. Therefore, I will spend the next six months, the next year, the next two years, however long it is until the next election trying to inform people about what a wrong-headed move this is, how bad this idea is. And hopefully we can force this government to back down.

Q:       There have been headlines lately in the media about Alberta’s healthcare system, new programs, new ideas, and it seems that they are not very good for the ordinary people or the citizen who turns towards the system for help. There are some ideas here in Ontario being heard in the ongoing struggle for the leadership for the governing party. How do you see these ideas developing in Ontario for the future of our healthcare system?

A:         There is no doubt that private corporation; private insurance corporations and healthcare corporations, many of them American, would like to see our system of Medicare dismantled. They would like to see more healthcare services delivered by private for profit companies. And they are spending an awful lot of money and an awful lot of time trying to persuade the people for this. But all of the evidence I have seen indicates that the most efficient way of delivering healthcare, the most effective way of delivering healthcare and the fairest way of delivering quality healthcare is through a publicly funded, publicly administered system. So I see our role within the NDP to continue to make that point. There are ways that our healthcare system can be improved. Let me give you one example. Currently before new prescription drugs are allowed in Ontario, they must go through a federal approval process and a provincial approval process. So after the federal government approves it then the Ontario committee looks at it. They almost never disagree with the federal decision, in fact I cannot think of when they have ever disagreed. But that process of simply delaying the approval process often  means that the drug company will be able to charge a very inflated price for, lets say nine months longer or twelve months longer. And if Ontario simply did away with that extra stage in the process, my sense is that we could save $200 million a year in the healthcare system on that point alone. The Conservatives have added some things to the healthcare system that I have trouble understanding what if anything, has it done to improve healthcare. For example this Telehealth idea, where you phone a 1-800 number during the night and you can talk to a nurse who has no idea about your health condition, has none of your medical records in front of her and then is going to give you advise. I know the Telehealth system is costing hundreds of millions of dollars across the province. What I do not see is where it is adding anything of benefit to our health system. My understanding is that someone will call the 1-800 number in the night get some advice and then in the morning they go to see their doctor anyway or go to the hospital emergency room.  That is duplication of services.

Q:       Not only is it a duplication, but the fact is it could be very serious. The fact that you are calling in the middle of the night means that there is an urgent situation that must be dealt with and the obvious solution would be to go to the emergency room or to see your family doctor. How would speaking to a nurse on the phone be better healthcare?

A:         Let me give you an alternative that actually saves money. Instead of having this type of duplication, the Telehealth system, the family physician and the hospital emergency room, what I would advocate is the need to have community health centres. Where physicians and nurses work out of as a team on a 24 hour basis. So I would not call some 1-800 number and talk to someone who knows nothing about me. I would call the community health centre that I am registered with, they have my medical file and I would ask them what to do. They would either say, no, it is not urgent for you to come in or yes it is serious and come on in right away. This would be better than to have separate organizations like Telehealth on one side, the family physician on the other and the hospital emergency room on the opposite side. What we should start to develop are community health centres and other health care providers to work together on a team basis more or less around the clock. That is where we would go virtually for all our healthcare needs. We would do away with the duplication, we would do away with the administration of separate organizations and it would be a very efficient process.

Q:       Over the last few years, a great number of hospitals in the Province have closed down either in the big cities or in the rural areas. We hear from the governing party that privatizing some services will be better healthcare and we hear very little from the Opposition Party.  Is there any action that your party might take to ease the pressure that these closures have caused?

A:         Again many of the measures that have been put in place by the current government in terms of our healthcare system make no sense. So for example, the government is currently cutting homecare. Homecare currently provides health service to a number of seniors who are otherwise able to live in their own home and stay in their own home. But as soon as you cut homecare then you necessitate many of those seniors to move into a nursing home or worse yet into a chronic care bed in a hospital, which costs more. So in fact many of the decisions made by this government in terms of healthcare have actually increased the costs of the healthcare system, have resulted in lower quality healthcare for the patients and makes no sense financially or in terms of the operation of the overall healthcare system. The issue of homecare is one of them, this government’s desire to have most of the long-term care beds operated by private for profit corporations is another one that makes no sense because it costs more money. The whole issue of establishing a separate entity called Telehealth when many people will call Telehealth in the middle of the night and then go see their family doctor the next day  or go to the emergency room anyway, these kinds of duplications in the healthcare system are not providing us with better quality care, in fact they are driving up the cost of healthcare without providing us with better quality care.

Q:       I recently found myself in the emergency room due to a very serious car accident. I was taken by ambulance and I waited three hours before I decided that I better walk away from this emergency room, because it did not seem like I was going to be treated anyway. Considering my medical background, I should have been assessed and seen by a doctor quickly not left waiting. It was midnight when I decided that I should leave and that is exactly what I did. This is not good quality healthcare. Is this what we have to look forward to in the future of healthcare?

A:         Let me tell you what I think the government’s real healthcare agenda is. You really have to listen to what the members of this government are saying. The Minister of Finance believes we should have private hospitals, the Minister of Health believes we should have private hospitals or privatized services, the former Deputy Premier and former Minister of Finance, who is running for Premier, believes that we should have a two-tiered healthcare system. This conservative government, at the end of the day does not support medicare. At the end of the day this is a government that believes more healthcare should be delivered by private for profit corporations. So because they are not dedicated to medicare because they do not believe in medicare, I think if you look over the last seven years you can actually see all kinds of evidence where they have tried to undermine our medicare system. Where they have tried to lessen the public confidence in our medicare system. Where they have in effect allowed the system to become less efficient and less effective rather than more efficient and more effective. And I think it is part of a long-term strategy on their part to promote private for profit healthcare and eliminate or do away when they can, with the publicly funded and publicly administered system that most Canadians and most Ontarians are so very proud of.

Q:       It has been almost six years since our last recession and just when it looked like the economy might be better, we find ourselves in another recession. Factories are closing their doors, people are losing their jobs, the economy is behaving badly, our dollar is plunging down. Do you, as the leader of a socialist party, believe that you can help and control all of these things and implement your programs at the same time?

Q:        I do not think you can control all of those things, because some of what is happening in terms of our economic life and in terms of our social life, some of it is being determined by international events and conditions.  For example, I think one of the mistakes we have made in Canada and in Ontario is to allow ourselves to become too dependent on the American market. I think the figure now is 85% of our exports in Ontario go to the United States.  When you become so dependent on another country’s economy, you lose control over your own. And so we are seeing events happen in the United States, we are seeing a loss of consumer confidence, we are seeing massive lay-offs in some American industries and that then bubbles over into our own. It is very difficult to do anything about that in the  short-term. It would be very difficult for the government of Ontario to do anything about that in the short-term. In the longer-term you can do something about it. In the longer-term you can and should have a deliberate strategy to be less dependent on the United States, to purse other opportunities elsewhere in the world. So that you are less dependent on the United States. That would be the long-term strategy. In the short-term, there are still things that can be done to improve the quality of life for people in Ontario. Let me give you one example. This government would rather put people in temporary shelters or put them up in hotel rooms, which are very expensive, than have a strategy to build affordable housing. Even their own property developer friends tell them that developers are not interested in building affordable housing. Developers are interested in building housing for upper income people because that is where they can make a profit. There is no profit in building houses for lower and modest income families. Government should be doing that; it would make more sense for this government to be building modest affordable housing than it makes to be putting people up in hotel rooms. Or putting them up in emergency shelters, which in fact turn out to be very expensive. That is a one concrete thing that can be done to improve people’s quality of life and give them a better opportunity, a better chance to participate and contribute to the economy and to society. A second point I will make is that this government has made substantial cuts to what I call public health. The inoculation of young children, the assurance that you will have a public health nurse that will be able to visit the schools and visit families who want help, there have been severe cut backs to that. It means that more children, more people are at risk of contracting serious infectious diseases like tuberculosis which once they get free in our society, it will cost tens of millions of dollars to stamp them out.  It is the old case of prevention always costs less than treatment. This government has substantially cut the amount of money that it is prepared to invest in prevention and as a result, it costs us more down the line in our healthcare system when people become sick or ill or when they become injured. Walkerton is a primary example of that. It would have cost very little money for the province to have continued to operate the public water testing laboratories. It would have cost very little money to have maintained the number of water and sewer inspectors that we had across the province in the Ministry of the Environment. But in order to finance tax cuts, the government closed the laboratories and fired about 700 of the inspection personnel. They saved a little bit of money their. Now you look at the loss of money, the loss of seven lives, the healthcare problems of over 2000 people who became seriously ill. The money that they had to spend in Walkerton to put in a new water system, the money they had to spend to settle the legal claims. The money for the inquiry, it has been much much more money that they have had to spend. There are several examples like that where this government has made the wrong decision. In order to finance their tax cuts they have cut strategies at the municipal level or at the Ministry of Health or at the Ministry of the Environment and at the end it will cost us a lot more money and a lot of pain and grief in terms of peoples lives.

Q:       I would like to paint an overall picture of Ontario. The environment is in a bad state, the economy is suffering, the healthcare system is probably at the very lowest state of care and efficiency, the education system is in a revolution and no one is sure as to how these students will do. Is there any hope for this society?

A:         Yes there is. I want to say first the recognition factor. I think what is being recognized now is this; that a tax cut will not provide you or me or my family or your family with safe clean drinking water. That a tax cut will not improve our healthcare system. That a tax cut that takes more money out of education will not improve my child’s or your child’s education which they need more than ever in this complex knowledge base society. And you know what? It now turns out that a tax cut does not even improve the economy. Because after all these tax cuts we should not be facing the levels of unemployment and the deficits we are now seeing.

Q:       So your solution is that the cutbacks should stop and this way things will improve? Or do we need further measures to be taken and policies and priorities to be changed?

A:         I believe that we must begin to re-invest in protecting the environment, protecting our drinking water and the air we breathe. That will require not only rules and not only trained professional people to do that but it will require some financial investment. We must invest in affordable housing. We have far too many people who cannot find a roof over their head or cannot keep a roof over their head or who are in danger of losing the roof over their head now. And this is not good for our society or for our economy. We need to make some investments in those things. We need to make some thoughtful investments in healthcare to sustain and improve our medicare system. We should stop privatizing our healthcare system. It will be more expensive, it will be less efficient and it will result in lower quality healthcare. We have to find the money to make some of these new investments. Now my point is that the most lower and modest and middle income families really did not get a tax cut. They may have had their income taxes reduced a little bit but their property taxes were increased, if they wanted to sent their children to university or college the tuition fees increased. They are now paying higher user fees to get a license to drive a car, higher user fees for their children to take part in recreation programs. User fee after user fee, so most people did not get a so-called tax cut.  Bay Street got a substantial tax cut and the well off in this province got a substantial tax cut. Now it is time for them to make a contribution once again to the healthcare system, to the environmental protection system and the education system we all need if we are going to succeed as individuals and if we are going to succeed as a province.

Q:       I would like to end this interview with one final question. Are you ready for a possible election sometime this year?

A:         We are quite prepared for a provincial election. In fact we very much want to have the chance to debate whether Ontario citizens would be better served by a system of public electricity or whether we would be better served by selling our electricity system to international companies like Enron. We very much want to debate whether medicare is the way to go or whether selling off our healthcare system to private insurance companies in the United States would provide us with better medical care. It certainly has not in the United States. We very much want to debate whether it is in my interest, or anyone’s interest to have universities charging tuition fees of ten and twenty thousand dollars a year, such as the majority of our young people in university or college would not be able to attend and get the education they need. We want to debate those issues.

Q:       Mr. Hampton, thank you for taking the time for this interview.

A:         Thank you Tom.