Conversations in Toronto

I sat at the picnic table with these two American expats living in Toronto. They left the US, fed up with her dead-end politics and the lack of social net. They were discussing headlines from the right-wing rag of a newspaper they found in the recycling bin. One story talked about the benefits of the financial bail out, now estimated to cost about 2 trillion dollars of public money, effectively making it a nationalization of the financial sector, but without any public oversight.

“We should nationalize the pharmaceutical industry instead”, says one, let’s call him the Bearded One. “It would be cheaper and better for the economy. We’d have cures instead of treatment. We’d have healthy society, universal health care would cost peanuts, it would be the cheapest part of the budget. Healthy people would be happy people, strong people, more productive people.”

Here I jump in with a quote I only read yesterday, “You may be onto something, o Bearded One. Henry Gadsden, the head of Merck, the pharma company which gave us the suicide pill called Vioxx, once told Fortune magazine that he wanted Merck to be more like chewing gum maker Wrigley’s. He wanted to make drugs for healthy people, so that he could sell to everyone.” (See “Selling Sickness”, by Ray Maynihan and Alan Cassels). Then, the smart mouth that I am, I said, “If you nationalized the pharma industry you could go back home, and not put a drain on Canadian health care system.”

Well, that started them off. Says the Baseball Head (bold, pale head with blood veins resembling, well, a baseball), “Real change would have to happen first.” I should add that neither is a democrat supporter, both share Noam Chomsky’s ideas of America a one-party system, where two factions battle for “full-spectrum” dominance. He flips the pages, says, “Look, Obama in talks with Bush over support for free trade with Colombia.”

Here I jump in again, as the subject is close to me what with the novel I am working on, “You referring to death squads killing union leaders.”

They look at me, I see sparks in their eyes, and I know where they’re going with it, they know me enough to know how I feel about Canada’s neo-con government. Baseball says, “Do you really think the US will blink about something like that when even Canada, that bastion of reason on the continent, supports death squads? Look how many people have blood on their hands after marking an X next to a neo-con in the last fed elections.”

“Whoa,” I say, “Hold on a second. What do you mean? Are you calling Harper a closeted-murderer?” (Stephen Harper is the neo-con prime minister of Canada)

“Is he not pushing for free-trade agreement with Colombia?” The Bearded One asks rhetorically.

Baseball adds, “It starts with supporting death squads in Colombia, murdering union leaders in South America, it moves on to assassinations of Canadian workers.”

That’s a bit much even for my keen ears, which always perk up when conspiracies are discussed. I say, “Colombia and Canada are not exactly a good comparison…”

“Oh? Who assassinates abortion doctors if not fundamentalists close to neo-cons…”