While Senator Kirby recommends increased federal funding for health care, his main goal is to have public funding directed to for-profit health corporations. "These goals are incompatible, said Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the 100,000-member Council of Canadians. If Canada accepts Kirby's competitive bidding model, we will be forced to open our doors to American corporations who will use NAFTA to dismantle medicare."

That Senator Kirby is proposing this model is no surprise. Senator Kirby is on the Board of Directors of Extendicare, a North American for-profit long-term care corporation. He's also on the Board of Miza Pharmaceuticals. The fact that these recommendations would substantively benefit these corporations would normally be seen as conflict of interest. However, the Senate has no conflict of interest guidelines.

"Senator Kirby may be from Nova Scotia, but his latest report reflects a Bay Street corporate approach that will intensify the serious problems with health care in Nova Scotia," said Ian Johnson, vice-chairperson, Nova Scotia Citizens' Health Care Network. "We are already fighting private MRI's in Nova Scotia, Kirby's recommendations allow all private clinics to access more public dollars and seriously undermine provincial health care systems."

Colleen Fuller, health care researcher and author of "Caring for Profit" considers the Kirby report tantamount to a Trojan horse for the public system: "All evidence is showing that the type of competitive process proposed by Senator Kirby would undoubtedly lead to for-profit corporations squeezing out non-profit providers out of the system. This is what is happening in other countries and is even happening with homecare in Ontario. Once the system is dominated by for-profit corporations, the prices will skyrocket."

Other recommendations that will undermine our public system include a proposal to fund hospitals in what amounts to a contractual fee-for-service basis as well as allowing patients who do not get timely service to take their money out of the public health care system.

"Senator Kirby report is big on rhetoric and short on evidence, says Anil Naidoo, Health Campaigner for the Council of Canadians. We shouldn't be comparing it to the real in-depth study that was done by the Romanow Commission".