Tommy Douglas: National Hero, Health Care Pioneer and ... Bigot?

Surprise, surprise, a man born in 1904 didn't like the gays.

According to the editors at the right wing Sun Media chain, “If there was any doubt the left dominates the media of this country it was erased by their silence following the recent release of the RCMP's secret file on socialist icon Tommy Douglas.” The Sun editors are perplexed that few outlets reported on the fact that Douglas believed “subnormals” should be sterilized and homosexuality was a mental disease. While the Sun views this as evidence that the lefty-dominated media is trying to spare its readership the embarrassment of learning uncomfortable truths about the man voted “the Greatest Canadian” in 2004, The Mark Newsroom views it as good reporting. Is it newsworthy that a man who first took office in 1935 had views about mental illness and homosexuality we find reprehensible today? Nor have his views only recently become known; eugenics was the topic of his university thesis. Of course it’s always good to remind ourselves our heroes aren’t the perfect beings we’d like them to be, but evidence of a liberal-biased media this is not.

Douglas’s daughter Shirley was in the news recently, drawing the ire of the National Post editorial board for saying that under Stephen Harper’s government the health care system is “being starved to death.” “Ms. Douglas's accusation is curious,” says the Post, “considering that the current government has honoured the 10-year health accord with the provinces” signed in 2004, giving $41.2 billion to the provincial health systems over a decade. In any case, the Post doesn’t think throwing money at health care is going to lead to a better system. “Rather than demand more public dollars, Ms. Douglas would have been better to call for a reform that would actually help patients,” says the Post, recommending (you guessed it) “parallel for-profit systems” be set up alongside the current public system. We’re not sure we agree with that, but we think this is a conversation Canadians desperately need to be having. In all the supposedly pre-election banter in the media over the past few months, comparatively minor issues like corporate tax cuts and fighter jets have carried the day.