Robert Salois, Quebec's former health and welfare commissioner, is slamming the province after his position and organization were abolished under last week's provincial budget.

The independent health watchdog — which was created by Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard when he was health minister in 2006 — published annual reports on the performance of the healthcare system. 

The reports were often critical, highlighting flaws within the public system. A March 2015 report, for instance, found that Quebec's drug plan is unsustainable.

Prior to the budget, Salois says he was not giving any indication or warning that his office would close down. A government employee called to tell Salois, but he says he wasn't given any explanation or justification for disbanding the office of 23 staff members.

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Manitobans should hope for cuts, in the right places. Patients in Manitoba suffer longer wait times trying to see a doctor in the ER than in almost all jurisdictions across Canada. The numbers have been repeatedly crunched by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, a national health-care analysis agency. Manitobans wait, on average, 5.7 hours in the ER, compared with the national average of just over three hours. Repeated interventions and promises to cut queues here have failed and the lines are growing longer.

But that might have been expected, since data also show that more patients who need admission onto medical wards are lying in wait in the ER, because (for example) there aren't enough nursing home beds for elderly people ready to be discharged. This may explain why the NDP government's strategy to open quick-care community clinics has not eased the pressure on emergency rooms.

And despite the addition of hundreds of millions of dollars more in the health budget, Manitobans are still waiting too long for services such as knee replacements, ultrasounds or MRIs that are key to getting in to see a specialist and then get surgery, months down the road.

There is room to cut costs in government and public services, to use money more efficiently in smarter ways -- Manitoba spends more per capita, and as a share of its GDP, on health than most provinces. Yet, Mr. Pallister, an MLA in the cost-cutting days of the Filmon era, has chosen to tiptoe around the idea of cutting government expenses in the areas of health and education. He has said no frontline workers will lose their jobs, but that still leaves a lot of room for change.

Manitoba hospitals are run and funded much the way they have been for decades, which suits the institutions' needs, not those of patients. Budgets, for example, are funded basically to match hospital spending in the previous year, with a bit more for inflation or for new programs. Other jurisdictions with as good or better systems (including those in Canada) have moved to tie budgets instead to the volume of services delivered. This helps spur innovation that puts patients at the centre of service. Further, European countries, outperforming Manitoba and Canada's medicare system for quality and cost, have universal systems that blend private and public funding.

The fear of private health care is almost palpable in Canada because Canadians can't see past the U.S. model, which sits next door like an elephant waiting to roll over. But Canada has more in common with, and more to learn from, the European experience, where social-welfare systems are equally strong and tied to national identity.

Mr. Selinger's sacred-cow analogy means he will milk the scare tactics to death. Manitobans need a better prescription for what ails our health system. It's up to opposition parties to start talking about that.

posters are pinned up in university washrooms and donors collect cash in exchange for their body fluids. Canadian donors get a $25 gift card per donation in Saskatoon.

Blood donors typically donate twice a year, while plasma donors can donate once a week, but the process is more complex and takes three times longer than a simple blood draw.

Despite these assurances, a move toward pay-for-plasma is facing opposition from the BC Chapter of the Canadian Hemophilia Society and others who decry it as dangerous and wrong to tamper with Canada's voluntary blood/tissue donor model.

"Don't worry is not a plan … [pay-for-plasma clinics] continue to target homeless shelters and methdone clinics," said Michael McCarthy, a tainted blood survivor and former vice president of the Canadian Hemophilia Society. He was recently in Ottawa to lobby the federal government to ban pay-for-plasma clinics.

"Health Minister Jane Philpott keeps saying that the screening methods used are stringent. That's not true. Private blood brokers have no oversight — none. Not in the U.S. and not here," said Kat Lanteigne of Blood Watch, an activist organization fighting the Iranian company's move into Canada.

So far CPR is simply stockpiling the donations as they do not have a buyer. Many other countries ban the sale of human material. Quebec has forbidden the sale of human blood or plasma, and Ontario recently prohibited paying blood or plasma donors.

Concern is growing about the implications of rising drug prices for individuals and health systems around the world. With little transparency around the costs of drug development, Narcyz Ghinea and colleagues call for greater accountability from drug companies to ensure a fair price for new medicines

Leader Brad Wall seems mightily unconcerned with the doubters, announcing Thursday that a Sask. Party government would expand the program to CT scans. Health policy analyst Steven Lewis sees the Sask. Party pledge as a “natural extension” from the MRI program.