Thousands of protestors from across Ontario filled the lawn in front of Queen's Park. Banners, buttons and posters were ubiquitous. The speeches started fashionably late (an old ploy to build crowd interest). Buses lines the street around the Provincial legislature. The crowd chanted, cheered and loudly applauded as speaker after speaker stepped up to the microphone and told them what they had come to hear. Bette Stephenson (an old nemesis of mine from her days as Education Minister in Bill Davis' Tory cabinet) lurked around behind the stage. Letters of support were read. A pleasant enough time was had by all.
I had to keep reminding myself that these were not wide-eyed young students or radical anti-nuclear protestors, but members of the Ontario Medical Association, come to wage war on Bill C-49 (the one that would end extra billing as we know it).
Of course, there plenty of signs that this was no ordinary protest: almost all of the attendees wore white smocks. I idly wondered if the pilots of planes flying overhead might be blinded by the glare. Then, I noticed two planes trailing the banners "Doctors for Freedom" and "Bill 94 may be hazardous to your health." As far as I'm concerned, groups that can afford to have planes carry their message should not, on principle, be allowed to hold protest rallies in front of the provincial legislature!
(Later on, I would be struck by the conspicuous absence of Marxist/Leninists, who had become regulars at student and labour rallies. Their non-appearance was understandable; but, if you can't be harangued by cries of "Stop the imperialist aggressors!" and "US out of Pago Pago!" what's the point of attending a rally?)
"...government isn't addressing the access issue..." droned Earl Myers, President of the OMA.
Not bad, I thought. We're starting with a position with which I can sympathize. Of course, any talk of chronic underfunding of medical facilities in this province would have to predominantly feature the Conservatives who, after all, were in power for almost 40 years before the Liberals entered into their accord with the NDP. Pretty ironic, that, considering that the Conservatives are now portraying themselves as friends of the doctors. Is anybody conducting studies of long-term memory loss in the medical profession?
It is also worth noting that the $53 million in transfer payments that the federal government withheld from Ontario last year because of extra-billing would have helped alleviate much of the funding crisis. But, inasmuch as Bill C-94 didn't address the problem of poor access due to government underfunding, I found myseld in agreement with Dr. Myers.
A little girl standing next to a stroller was barely able to hold up a sign even bigger than she was. It read: "If you like our postal service, you'll love state run medicine." "Are you a doctor?" I asked her. She giggled prettily and looked away.
"(Doctors are) being denigrated and insulted on a daily basis..." Dr. Myers again.
I thought I spotted William Daniels, an actor, in the crowd. I couldn't believe it, so I sidled up to him, noticing that his lapel badge read "Dr. Mark Craig," his character from St. Elsewhere. "Good for you," he muttered. "Don't take any crap from anybody!"
Hippocrates, standing close by, was shocked. "This is ridiculous," he remarked. "Grown men acting like spoiled teenagers. And, for what? So that a small minority can retain the unfair privilege of charging their patients more than the going rate?"
"Oh, put a sock in it, fella," Craig hotly stated. "This protest is about medical freedom, brother. It's about not allowing the government to interfere with the patient/doctor relationship. I would have expected you, of all people, to understand."
"It's about nothing of the sort," Hippocrates argued. "This protest is about money. Those who extra-bill, mostly specialists, want to continue to charge what they desire, regardless of how it may limit access to their services. Freedom is a screen of smoke being used to gain support among those who do not extra-bill and the general public."
"Oh?" Craig snorted. "And, just who do you think you are to judge how much doctors should charge? Albert Schweitzer?"
"Who?"
"We cannot be bought! We are not for sale!" Dr. Myers once more.
Continuing to move through the crowd, I bumped into a couple who looked suspiciously familiar. "Aren't you Charles and Diana?"
"You must be mistaken," the woman said, and I knew I wasn't.
"What are you doing here?" I asked. "I thought you were at Expo 86."
"We are," Charles explained. "You're making this up, undoubtedly to gratuitously ridicule us once more before we leave Vancouver."
"Well," I remarked, "your speeches were about as entertaining as collecting lint."
"You see!"
"Bad bill pushers (should be) prosecuted like bad drug pushers..." Thus spake Dr. Stephenson.
Behind the stage, a silver-haired old man futilely shouted "Tommy Douglas!" over and over again, sometimes adding, "He'll beat you from his grave!" and "Canada will never forget Tommy Douglas!" His point seemed a trifle obscure, until he shouted, "The people...70 per cent are against the doctors!" I was hoping that an interesting confrontation would take place when Dr. Stephenson, the imperious Red Queen ("They cannot afford tuition? Off with their educations!") came down off the platform to talk to reporters and well-wishers, but she ignored him.
Meanwhile, CityPulse ace (and one of the hardest working journalists in television news) Colin Vaughn stalked around, muttering darkly about getting batteries if he had known. What an all-round guy!
I was surprised to find Monika Turner, a former Chairperson of the Ontario Federation of Students, at the rally. I had thought that she was going to do post-graduate work at the University of Toronto, or, at least, study wolves in the Arctic, "I guess I'm a political rally junkie," she told me with a smile and a shrug.
"Political rally!" I grimaced. "Professionals aren't supposed to hold public protests. They're the ones who spend thousands of dollars on studies that support their preconceived positions. They're the people who get dressed in their finest suits and have a quiet chat with politicians over lunch at Winston's, for crying out loud! What next? A lawyers rally? A used car dealers rally? And, what's going to happen to those groups who used to hold protests because they had no other means of communicating with politicians?"
Monika put a steadying hand on my shoulder. "Ira," she said, "the times, they truly are achangin'."
"We don't want socialism, we want leadership!" Larry Grossman, leader of the provincial Conservative Party, said. The crowd roared.
As I left, I wondered, of all things, how the Sun was going to cover the rally. Would Claire Hoy have the temerity to suggest that it had all planned by the KGB, and that those who had taken part in it were really ideological dupes of the Russians? Would McKenzie Porter have the nerve to suggest that most of the doctors were really there in order to find partners for illicit sexual liaisons in the bushes around Queen's Park?
Somehow, I doubted it.