The Greatest Canadian was named last night by the CBC. Tommy Douglas, who created the social healthcare system here in Canada was named our greatest person. I can see some of the wistful theory behind that - after all, it seemed like such a good idea at the time, and Douglas would have brought it over from his native Scotland, before the Bonny Isle turned into the welfare money pit it is today. Douglas never could have imagined that by offering free healthcare to the masses, we would have plagues and infections to rival those of the pre-medicare Victorian times. He could not have guessed that by this century, we would have C. dificile, hospital aquired infections, and massive quangos who do nothing all day except sit around discussing how to combat these problems - all the while charging the governments outrageous consulting fess and not really solving anything. By offering medicine for free, our doctors, nurses and other hospital staff are not making adequate pay. Older docs are forced to keep working, because today's generation of graduates have all moved to the U.S. to find their fortunes - fortunes they could never attain here.

Tommy Douglas had a brilliant vision that was not thought through to reflect the ages. I'm sure that if he were to look at Canada and the UK today, he would be the first to say "If I knew then what I know now..."

Sheer dollars and cents wouldn't have given Tommy Douglas the award for Greatest Canadian. In fact, he would not have even been considered, given the amount of money this country and its taxpayers have lost on Medicare.

However, on sheer visionary spirit, it is understandable why the older generation of Canadians (the only people who actually watch the deplorable and boring CBC now that there's no hockey) would have voted for him. These are the same people who time and again vote in the most corrupt government our country has ever seen, just because they used to have a good thing going, and they used to be people you could believe in. Canada is crying for it's glory days of the past, and leaving no hope for the future. Perhaps it's time to stop looking back, and hold a new contest - The Most Promising Canadian.