Once Voted the Greatest Canadian of all Time, Tommy Douglas was a Prairie Politician who Believed in Democratic Communism/Socialism; the Crucial Role of Civil/Human Rights, and the Great Potential of COOPERATION FOR THE COMMON GOOD.

Douglas in 1945. 1st Leader of the New Democratic Party

Once Voted the Greatest Canadian of all Time, Tommy Douglas was a Prairie Politician who believed in Democratic Communism/Socialism; the Crucial Role of Civil/Human Rights, and the Great Potential of COOPERATION FOR THE COMMON GOOD.

“We can’t stand still.

We can either go back or we can go forward.

The choice we make today will decide the future”

Although he is perhaps, best known as the “Father of Medicare, Douglas was a championship boxer, and a Baptist minister; who later exchanged his pulpit for a political platform.

 A powerful orator and tireless activist, he sat first as a federal MP and then served for 17 years as premier of Saskatchewan, where he introduced the universal health-insurance system that would eventually be adopted across Canada and now the United States of the Americas.

Medicare was born in Saskatchewan on July 1, 1962. It would be the first government-controlled, universal, comprehensive single-payer medical insurance plan in North America. It was a difficult birth. The North American medical establishment and the entire insurance industry were determined to stop Medicare in its tracks. They feared it would become popular and spread, and they were right. Within 10 years all of Canada was covered by a medical insurance system based on the Saskatchewan plan, and no serious politician would openly oppose it.

The same interests that tried to prevent Medicare and are still continually trying to destroy it in Canada and up until 2012 had mostly succeeded in stopping similar progress in the United States.

After more than half a century of struggle, the United States of the Americas Medical Association, and the private insurance industry(like Blue Cross) still control the United States of the Americas medical system despite minor steps forward like Medicaid for the very poor (Welfare Benefits???) and Medicare (Welfare Benefits???) for the elderly. The latest plan passed by Congress and endorsed by the private insurance industry amounts to PUBLIC/TAXPAYER SUBSIDIES for the PRIVATE insurance industry???

As leader of the national NDP, he was a staunch advocate of programs that other leaders from other political parties later attempted to take credit for;  such as the Canada Pension Plan and was often the conscience of Parliament on matters of Civil Liberties/Rights. In the process, he made democratic socialism a part of mainstream Canadian political life—but he attempted at least to do so in a proper, sustainable way.