The hand of the Atlas Network – the ‘the Johnny Appleseed of antiregulation groups’ – seems never to be far from such efforts

Everyone paying attention to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s ongoing effort to break up and “refocus” Alberta’s public health care system understands that its true goal is to undermine it to the point her government can introduce U.S.-style private health care.

United Conservative Party propagandists may try to fool us with ludicrous claims that what the government is planning is “European-style” health care – it’s obviously not. Ms. Smith was more frank about what she had in mind before she was premier. Albertans should have been playing closer attention. 

But decades of empirical health care research make it obvious that the government’s plan to encourage cash-up-front surgeries by private surgical clinics in a province where the supply of medical professionals is limited will speed treatment for a few folks with money but make lineups longer and care unaffordable for many in what’s left of the public system. 

To paraphrase Honest Abe Lincoln, you can fudge the some of the numbers all of the time, and all of the numbers some of the time, but you can’t fudge all of the numbers all of the time. 

And this is why, sooner or later, advocates of health care privatization and private health insurance fall back on ideology, theories and private greed spun as a fundamental right to justify their policies. 

Hard facts, after all, have a well-known liberal bias. So it takes hard work – and networks of funders with access to hard money – to counter them. 

Which brings us to a recent effort by a group of right-wing think tanks to encourage Prime Minister Mark Carney to ignore the Canadians calling for his government to enforce the Canada Health Act in the face of UCP legislation that puts the entire Canadian health care system at risk. 

A letter from the leaders of six think-tank-adjacent market fundamentalist organizations appeared on the Internet this week lauding the federal Liberal government’s openness to “health care reforms being pursued in Alberta that mirror practices used in high-performing universal public health care systems around the world.”

“It is encouraging that your government has not yet signaled an intent to stifle Alberta’s decision to copy what better-performing European countries do – allow patients to receive surgery in the public system or pay for one at a private facility (including payment through private insurance),” the letter continues, repeating UCP talking points effectively debunked by health care policy researcher Andrew Longhurst. 

You can read the letter for yourself, but we can safely assume the signers of the letter are well aware of the pressure Prime Minister Carney is facing to enforce the Canada Health Act to protect public health care, which is clearly put at risk in all provinces by the UCP’s policies because it opens the door to U.S. health care corporations under Canada’s international trade agreements. 

In addition to Troy Lanigan, the CEO of an entity called SecondStreet.org, on whose website a copy of the letter can be found, it has been signed by CEOs or directors of five other market advocacy organizations. 

At various times, Mr. Lanigan has been president of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, of Preston Manning’s eponymous Manning Centre (later known as the Canada Strong & Free Network), and of the so-called World Taxpayers Associations. “Troy is a member of the Washington DC-based Atlas Network’s Council of Mentors and serves on the board of directors for both the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms and Institute for Liberal Studies,” says his potted biography on the Manning Foundation’s website. 

SecondStreet.org, founded by Mr. Lanigan in 2019, describes itself as a public policy think tank. But there is no question it is a leading advocate of health care privatization and marketization. 

The other signers:

David Clement, CEO of the Consumer Choice Centre. The Washington-based CCC, according to the DeSmog.com database, quoting DeSmog UK, has received funding from the Atlas Network. According to the University of Bath’s Tobacco Control Research Group, the CCC has lobbied against tobacco regulation in the U.S., U.K. and European Union. 

Peter Copeland, Deputy Director of Domestic Policy of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. One of many clones of the venerable Fraser Institute, the grandaddy of Canadian market-fundamentalist think tanks, Ottawa-based MLI is another partner of the Atlas Network. It’s too late to ask, but one suspects neither Macdonald nor Laurier would approve of the use of their names by this organization. 

Daniel Dufort, CEO or the Montreal Economic Institute. MEI has been approvingly called a “kind of Fraser Institute in Quebec” by The Financial Post. Maxime Bernier, founder and leader of the far-right People’s Party of Canada is a former vice president. MEI was listed as a member of the Atlas Network, DeSmog says, until 2021. 

Brett Skinner, CEO of the Canadian Health Policy Institute. There’s not much information on this Toronto-based organization, another self-described denizen of Thinktankistan. It is not to be confused, though, with the highly respected Canadian Institute of Health Information, known as CIHI. You’ll have to dig pretty deeply on the website of the CHPI’s publication to find out where it’s coming from, but it’s there, way down at the bottom of the page under Mission, Method and Values: “People have a fundamental right to take actions necessary to protect and improve their own health,” says the final bullet point. “Policies that hinder or prohibit people from privately obtaining medical goods, services, and insurance are contrary to the principle of self-preservation.”

Christine Van Geyn, interim executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation. The CCF – I know, that grates – describes its mission as defending the constitutional freedoms of Canadians. “While CCF describes itself as ‘non-partisan,’” DeSmog notes, “it has consistently opposed measures put in place by the Liberal government.” It has historical ties to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and has also been listed as a partner of the Atlas Foundation. 

If nothing else, we can see that the hand of the Atlas Network – the Washington-based organization that has been called “the Johnny Appleseed of antiregulation groups” – is near almost every participant in this effort to encourage the prime minister to leave Alberta alone to experiment with ways to wreck public health care.

But that hardly makes them unique.