A recently minted social democratic medical lobby aimed at defending Canada’s medical care system with ideas and tactics instead of whining sentimentality about how great the recent past was. While the formation of the Institute offers the first evidence of neural activity within the Canadian left in more than a decade, we’d still like to know why, during their recent press conference to announce that the “crisis” in Canada’s medical system is being articifically created by right wingers in order to position us for double-tiering and privatization, was the ancient Dave Barrett, former B.C. Premier and a man old enough to have hung out with T.C. Douglas, sitting at the table trying to generate enough brainwaves to look wise.