WEDNESDAY,NOVEMBER13,2019 | THE GLOBE AND MAILO A
undoubtedly its face.
The B.C.government, in its
written closing arguments, said
the history of the proceedings –
which include an unsuccessful
campaign by Dr. Day to block a
provincial audit of his clinics –
make it apparent that “the plain-
tiffs do not conceive of this as an
actual bona fide constitutional
challenge, but rather as a form of
political theatre, and an attempt
to force change on the health-care
system for the financial benefit of
the corporate plaintiffs.”
That view is shared by Cana-
dian Doctors for Medicare, the BC
Health Coalition and a group of
patients backed by the British Co-
lumbia Nurses’ Union (BCNU), all
of which are intervenors in the
case. The BCNU set the stage for
the case more than 15 years ago
when the union agitated for the
government to enforce the law
against private clinics charging
patients out of pocket for medi-
cally necessary care. Contrary to
Dr. Day’s view that private clinics
act as a release valve for an over-
burdened public system, BCNU
president Christine Sorensen
fears that, if Dr. Day triumphs,
public wait times will get worse,
with private clinics cherry-pick-
ing uncomplicated patients and
luring away health-care workers.
“And at the end of the day,” Ms.
Sorensen said, “the physicians
and nurses and other health-care
professionals who work in these
facilities can’t be in two places at
one time.”
The BC Health Coalition, Cana-
dian Doctors for Medicare and the
patients and doctors who inter-
vened with them, described in
their written closing arguments
how they believe shortages of an-
esthesiologists, nurses and doc-
tors contributed to waiting lists in
the public system. One doctor
who testified in the case made
$965,826 in 2016-17 working for
Cambie and the Specialist Refer-
ral Clinic, another plaintiff in the
case – about four times as much as
what he usually earned in public
billings.
The question of how private,
paid-for options affect waiting
lists is one of many that have been
hashed out as more than 100 wit-
nesses, including Dr. Day and pa-
tients on both sides of the case,
testified in Justice Steeves’s cour-
troom.
Exactly how much public mon-
ey has been spent fighting the
case, the B.C.government refuses
to say.
The Canadian Constitution
Foundation, a legal charity that
describes itself as a defender of
constitutional liberties, filed an
access-to-information request to
find out how much the provincial
government had spent fighting
the case from 2009 to 2017.
When the Office of the Infor-
mation and Privacy Commission-
er for British Columbia ruled the
information should be released,
the NDP government appealed to
the B.C. Supreme Court and won,
meaning the figure will stay se-
cret. The Canadian Constitution
Foundation has raised more than
$5-million for Dr. Day’s side of the
case since 2011, said Joanna Baron,
the foundation’s executive direc-
tor. She estimated nearly 200 peo-
ple have contributed, some of
them small donors who give $50 a
month, others high-net-worth in-
dividuals who’ve given large sums
to the cause.
One of those high-net-worth
supporters is Anthony Fell, a for-
mer chairman of RBC Capital Mar-
kets who helped organize a fun-
draising lunch for the case at the
Toronto Club last month.
Dr. Day and the plaintiffs’ law-
yer, Peter Gall, flew in to address
the Oct. 8 gathering, which includ-
ed co-host Prem Watsa, the billio-
naire CEO of Fairfax Financial
Holdings Ltd., and former B.C.
premier Mr. Campbell, among
others.
“Our system is high-cost and
mediocre at best,” Mr. Fell said
during an interview, after retriev-
ing a binder about Dr. Day’s case
from among the tidy rows in a
glass case in his office at Toronto’s
Royal Bank Plaza. “The popula-
tion is aging and thegovernment
can’t afford to keep up. We see the
major hospitals across this coun-
try – including on [Toronto’s]
University Avenue – doing what
they call hallway medicine or
hallway treatment. And that’s not
good enough.”
It’s true that Canada spent
more on health care per person
($6,448) and as a percentage of
GDP (10.7 per cent) in 2018 than
the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development
average ($5,175 a person and 8.
per cent of GDP) and that Canada
is often ranked poorly on wait
times and access to physicians in
comparative international re-
search. However, there are deep
divisions about whether Dr. Day’s
prescription for more privately
paid-for care would cure would
ails the system.
Debbie Waitkus waited 27
months for a date for spinal sur-
gery for her son, Walid Khalfallah,
at BC Children’s Hospital, before
she gave up and took the teenager
to the Shriners Hospitals for Chil-
dren in Spokane, Wash. He suf-
fered a stroke on the operating ta-
ble in 2012 and wound up paralyz-
ed from the belly button down, a
heart-breaking outcome his
mother attributes, in part, to how
severely her son’s spine deterio-
rated while he languished in a
Canadian queue.
Mariël Schooff, meanwhile,
was told that she could wait as
long as five years in British Co-
lumbia’s public system for an en-
doscopic surgery to relieve the
chronic sinus infections that had
left her in excruciating pain. Fear-
ing she couldn’t wait that long,
Ms. Schooff borrowed money
against her home to pay $6,125.
to have the procedure performed
in a private clinic in 2002 (not
Cambie) by the same doctor whowould have, eventually, operated
on her for free at a public hospital.
Although Ms. Waitkus and Ms.
Schooff both faced long waits in
the public health-care system,
they wound up testifying on op-
posite sides of the case. Dr. Day in-
vited Ms. Waitkus to become one
of the plaintiffs in the case, while
the BCNU recruited Ms. Schooff,
now 73, to become a patient inter-
venor. She testified that her sinus
surgeon shouldn’t have asked her
to pay out of pocket for faster ac-
cess at his private clinic.
For Ms. Waitkus, a community
nurse in Kelowna, the case is not
something she dwells on daily as
she cares for her son, who is now
23 and attending a college pro-gram for adults with special
needs.
Testifying on Oct. 4, 2016, she
sobbed as she described the pan-
icked months she spent begging
anyone who would listen to
schedule a surgery to correct her
son’s kyphosis, a dramatic for-
ward bend in his spine.
Ms. Waitkus is deeply upset at
those who suggest that Dr. Day’s
case could wind up undermining
the public health-care system.
She said in an interview that she
only wants more options for pa-
tients like her son. “We do have a
strong public health-care system
right now, we really do,” she said.
“But waiting has become part of
our health-care system.”For his part, Dr. Day said he
wishes he had never started Cam-
bie or his long war with the B.C.
government. The experience has
contributed to turning all six of
his children, who range in age
from 20 to 42, off careers in med-
icine. Two of three of his younger
children would like to be lawyers,
he said, laughing.
“I would have been personally
much better off, both financially
and familywise, if I’d never gotten
into this,” he said. “But now that
we’ve come this far, we’re not go-
ing to quit.”
However Justice Steeves rules,
the case is expected to be ap-
pealed to the Supreme Court of
Canada.WalidKhalfallahgreetshismother,DebbieWaitkus,afteracyclerideinKelowna.Mr.Khalfallahwaited27monthsforaspinalsurgerydatebeforegoingtotheU.S.forprivatecare.Ms.
Waitkussayspatientsneedmoreoptions:‘Wedohaveastrongpublichealth-caresystem...butwaitinghasbecomepartofourhealth-caresystem.’LUCASOLENIUK/THEGLOBEANDMAIL
Mr.KhalfallahgetsaroundKelownaonahand-poweredcycle.Hesufferedastrokeontheoperatingtablein
2012andwoundupparalyzedfromthenaveldown,anoutcomehismotherattributes,inpart,tohowseverely
hisspinedeterioratedwhilehelanguishedinaCanadianqueue.LUCASOLENIUK/THEGLOBEANDMAILDr.RupinderBrarisontheboardofCanadianDoctorsforMedicare,aninterveningpartyinthecasebetween
Dr.DayandtheB.C.government.‘IthinkallCanadiansshouldbeveryconcernedbecauseit’sintheveryfabric
ofwhoweareasanationthatweprovidecareforoneanotherwhenweneedit,’Dr.Brarsays.
RAFALGERSZAK/THEGLOBEANDMAILNEWS |