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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: average joe who wrote (19294)	9/12/2010 1:19:44 AM
From: average joe	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

Tommy Douglas - Father of Medicare Thomas Clement "Tommy" Douglas, PC, CC, SOM (20 October 1904 – 24 February 1986) was a Scottish-born Baptist minister who became a prominent Canadian social democratic politician. As leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1942 and the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961, he led the first socialist government in North America and introduced universal public healthcare to Canada. When the CCF united with the Canadian Labour Congress to form the New Democratic Party, he was elected as its first federal leader and served in that post from 1961 to 1971. He is warmly remembered for his folksy wit and oratory with which he expressed his determined idealism, exemplified by his fable of Mouseland. urbansermons.org M.A. thesis on eugenics Douglas graduated from Brandon College in 1930, and completed his Master's degree (M.A.) in Sociology from McMaster University in 1933. His thesis entitled The Problems of the Subnormal Family endorsed eugenics. The thesis proposed a system that would have required couples seeking to marry to be certified as mentally and morally fit. Those deemed to be "subnormal" because of low intelligence, moral laxity or venereal disease would be sent to state farms or camps while those judged to be mentally defective or incurably diseased would be sterilized. Douglas rarely mentioned his thesis later in his life and his government never enacted eugenics policies even though two official reviews of Saskatchewan's mental health system recommended such a program when he became premier and minister of health. By that time, many people questioned eugenics after Nazi Germany had embraced it to create a "master race". Instead, Douglas implemented vocational training for the mentally handicapped and therapy for those suffering from mental disorders. (It may be noted that two Canadian provinces, Alberta and British Columbia, had eugenics legislation that imposed forced sterilization. Alberta's law was first passed in 1928 while B.C. enacted its legislation in 1933. It was not until 1972 that both provinces repealed the legislation.)