While health care is traditionally an important issue for Canadians, a new poll suggests it's no longer a top priority heading into a federal election.
A new poll conducted by The Strategic Counsel for CTV and the Globe and Mail found that only 12 per cent of Canadians think health care is the most important issue to be debated in the upcoming leadership debates.
That's down from 21 per cent just prior to the previous leaders' debates in January 2006.
In the new poll, health care stands third behind economic and environmental issues.
In step with the poll's findings, the Conservative Party has done a good job of steering the election campaign to be about leadership. Specifically, which party leader is best able to lead Canadians through a time of economic instability, a political science expert says.
"I think that the Conservative Party wants this election to be about leadership, not necessarily about issues," Antonia Maioni, the director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, told CTV.ca. "And so if the leitmotif is leadership and then talking about specific issues, health care has not become one of those specific issues yet in the campaign."
On Tuesday, Stephen Harper formally requested that half of the allotted time for the debates be devoted to the economy.
NDP leader Jack Layton had requested an all-party leaders' summit to discuss economic issues prior to the debates, but he was rebuffed by Harper.
The shift in focus to the economy comes as no surprise, given the economic turmoil in the United States that has sent shockwaves through the TSX.
Even those in the medical community understand that health care will take what they hope to be a temporary back seat to other issues.
"I understand that right now economics, with what's going on in the United States, is very important, but health care is number one," Canadian Medical Association president Dr. Robert Ouellet told CTV.ca.
"We will push so that we will remind [the parties] that health care is a very important issue, and they shouldn't think they have fixed it."
In past elections, the parties all addressed the same question of health-care reform as a long list of problems, from long wait lists for treatment to doctor shortages, exposed a health system that needed fixing, Maioni said.
"In this election, each party has decided to answer a different question," Maioni said. "So the Liberals have decided that pharmacare is what they want to talk about and the NDP have decided it is health human resources."
The Conservatives will most likely "be running on their record rather than any new promises," Maioni said.
But the debates may yet turn out to include a showcase of the leaders' overall health-care policies, said Lucille Auffrey, the chief executive officer of the Canadian Nurses Association.
Auffrey pointed to the results of another poll, which found that a vast majority of respondents consider health care a "very important" issue as they decide which party to support.
"I am very hopeful (about the debates)," Auffrey told CTV.ca. "You might not want to address an issue, but if your citizenry wants it addressed, why would you not do that?"
Maioni conceded that health care will always be an issue of importance not only for Canadians, but for politicians as well.
"Health care is the most expensive of social programs in Canada, it continues to be a lightning rod in terms of federal-provincial conflicts about money," Maioni said. "So I don't think it's going to go away any time soon but perhaps it's not being used as a political football in the same way that it has in the past few elections."
