OTTAWA - NDP Leader Jack Layton is headed to Washington to try lending Barack Obama a hand in his fight for health-care reform.
Layton has gone to considerable lengths in the past to imitate Obama's cheerful campaign speeches and copy his outfits and photo-op backdrops, and now will urge Americans to imitate Canada.
Layton will tout the merits of universal health care during a three-day trip in June, where he'll deliver a public speech and meet with Democrats in the White House, in Congress and at party headquarters.
With the U.S. bracing for a political dogfight over health reforms this year, Canada's medicare system has been dragged into the debate.
An American conservative group has taken out ads -- featuring the former head of the Canadian Medical Association, Brian Day -- warning viewers against moving toward a Canadian-style system.
But Layton will use a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Institute and his meetings with U.S. politicians to defend medicare and explain how it's so popular here that politicians wouldn't dare try scrapping it.
"We would go down there to not only defend Canada's health-care system -- but encourage them to adopt similar features," said NDP national director Brad Lavigne.
"(Medicare) is one of the greatest connections we have to each other. Regardless of your economic status, if you get sick, you will get care.
"That is something that is incredibly powerful. And that is something that no Republican-type government up here has been able to severely undermine."
The NDP's founding figure, the late Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas, is considered the father of universal health care in Canada.
The White House appears willing to return the favour.
Obama's communications director, Anita Dunn, and senior campaign adviser Marshall Ganz will attend an NDP convention in Halifax this summer to provide campaign tips.
Lavigne said Dunn will help with the so-called air war -- the PR battles fought on TV, radio and traditional media -- while Ganz will offer suggestions for the so-called ground war, such as attracting donors and getting out the vote.
Obama's campaign helped transform the Internet into a money-making machine for political causes and attracted many new supporters who'd never been involved in politics before.
"Right now in Canada we have a huge problem with more and more people tuning out the political process," Lavigne said.
"How to involve individuals in the political process."
Layton is only the most recent Canadian politician going down to Washington to build closer ties to the Obama administration.
Several Conservative cabinet ministers have already headed down since Obama's January inauguration, and Stephen Harper's aides go out of their way to stress how well the prime minister and president get along.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff also boasts close personal friendships to senior members of the Obama administration.
Obama appears to have a grasp of how Canada's health system works, but has suggested his proposed model will look somewhat different.
He told a town-hall meeting in March that universal health care is the aim of his administration but that the Canadian system is merely one way to go and likely wouldn't work in the United States.
"A lot of people think that in order to get universal health care, it means that you have to have what's called a single-payer system of some sort," he said.
"And so Canada is the classic example. Basically, everybody pays a lot of taxes into the health-care system, but if you're a Canadian, you're automatically covered ... you go in and you just say 'I'm sick' and somebody treats you and that's it," he said.
But he said implementing such a system in the U.S. would present an overwhelming challenge to politicians, employers and working Americans.
"The problem is, is that we have what's called the legacy set of institutions that aren't that easily transformed," he said.
The American system of employer-based health care began decades ago, he said, after Franklin D. Roosevelt imposed wage controls that prompted companies to offer health-care benefits to attract potential employees.
"So what evolved in America was an employer-based system," Obama said.
"It may not be the best system if we were designing it from scratch, but that's what everybody's accustomed to ... and so I don't think the best way to fix our health-care system is to suddenly completely scrap what everybody is accustomed to."
