Compare the New Democrat “policy” announcements on the fishery and shipbuilding, slipped out there last week with the Liberal one on health care and seniors, announced on Monday morning at a news conference.
The Liberal one wasn’t available online as of 1330 hours local time on Monday. That’s not encouraging, given the announcement happened at 1000 hrs.
The Libs will need to sort this out to make sure their information is readily available. Online media coverage of this announcement sucked. Most didn’t have a story and the one that did appear covered only a small portion of a much larger announcement.
But this is not just a case of announcing a vague intention. The Liberals announcement includes:
- a ministry of aging and seniors,
- an aging and seniors strategy that will also feature health and wellness promotion, respecting and celebrating seniors, supportive communities, seniors’ financial security, employment and life transitioning, secure housing options, and, caregiver assistance and support.
- a seniors’ advocate, similar to the child and youth advocate,
- a funding shift to rehab and other support to enable seniors to stay in their own communities longer, and
- better funding for long-term care and home care.
How this announcement plays with the public remains to be seen. Just recall that health care is the single biggest issue for voters according to polls. And don’t forget that seniors and seniors’ care is already a sensitive political issue. it will only get bigger in the years ahead.
From the sliding a sheet of paper department, a lot of this will look familiar to people who have been paying attention to any sort of policy announcements over the past decade.
That’s because many Conservative policies after 2003 just continued work that was already done or already in train under the Liberals.
From the superficial reporting department, consider that any media coverage of how many candidates the parties have nominated at this point is pretty much a pile of irrelevant bullshite.
Update II: Here’s the policy document in a version you can read and enjoy.
Caring for Our Seniors- srbp -
Update: CBC has an online story that went live after this post first went up. It is pretty vague on details despite the fact the Liberal announcement had tons of specifics.
What’s more interesting to see in the CBC comments section are the number of NDP astroturf (fake identities, likely all done by one or a small number of people) comments that criticise the announcement or claim – falsely - that the ideas are NDP ones.
You can expect a lot more of that sort of foolishness, especially if the NDP can’t come up with solid policy announcements of their own.