There is no election issue more deplorably ignored than health. At 11 per cent, health is a far larger slice of Canada’s economy than oil (just 3 per cent). Provincial governments spend a staggering 40 per cent of their budgets on health; their health ministries are bigger than the next 10 ministries combined. Voters ignore health at their own peril, because as Canada’s population ages, how politicians address health only matters more.

So why is it that at election time, voters indulge candidates who do not talk about health, but instead fret over the niqab? It makes no sense: while every Canadian family has a life-or-death drama to tell about a visit to the doctor or hospital, who can honestly say their lives were changed by someone’s head covering?

On Saturday the Star reported our poll of Canadians’ attitudes to health in this election. Unlike other polls, this one began with questions prepared by health experts at the University of Ottawa, without any sponsorship from political parties, health professions, corporations or unions. We executed this poll independently, because we think it is crazy that voters and politicians are disregarding this vital issue.

And Canadians agree with us.

When we asked Canadians to play prime minister for a day, by choosing how to spend a billion dollars, they put health at the top of their lists. Of Canadians’ top five spending priorities, fully three are health-related: improving public health, investing in disease and injury prevention, and improving health care in the final years of life. These are things that Canadians overwhelmingly believe make their lives better.

But ask about the issues that dominate this election, such as the military or fighting terrorists like ISIS, and Canadians put those in 19th and 20th place — the very bottom! The disconnect between what Canadians prioritize, and what politicians emphasize, is huge. Simply put, it’s syringes, not Syria, that matters most to Canadians.

That Canadians put health on top, trumping even defence and terrorism concerns, is no aberration. The pattern consistently holds true in EKOS polls dating back two decades. Any politician clever enough to change gears and campaign on health stands to reap a giant windfall.

Of course, campaigning on health is easier for some parties than others. Ask Canadians who they trust most on health, and they answer the NDP, Liberals and Conservatives in that order — but with each doing a scandalously poor job of articulating their vision for health, the question is somewhat like asking which of Snow White’s seven dwarves is the tallest. Only diehard Conservative voters, loyal as always, say that Stephen Harper has improved health care since taking office more than nine years ago.

But probe under these knee-jerk, partisan answers, by asking about specific actions of the Harper government on health, and a radically different truth emerges.

Canadians of all political stripes — including a majority of Conservatives — disagree with the Harper government’s health decisions. Ask Canadians how they feel about the prime minister’s refusal to meet with the provincial ministers of health for the last nine years, and they oppose that by a whopping seven-to-one margin. Ask them about cutting funding for the Public Health Agency of Canada, and again the opponents outnumber backers by seven-to-one. Or ask about the Harper government’s decision to cut federally funded health research, which is less emotive, and still Canadians deplore this by six-to-one.

These are staggering margins, the sort that pollsters almost never see. That they exist proves the Conservatives have more to lose than gain in a campaign waged on health. Because Conservative voters tend to be older (read: are sicker) a campaign attack that frames the Harper government’s actions as the “Death of Medicare” could seismically undermine their base — especially if those long-spurned provincial health ministers piled on.

And Canadians do believe in Medicare, almost as faith. More than three-quarters of those we polled opposed privatization, or letting those with money buy better or faster care. Huge majorities support expanding Medicare to home and community care (81 per cent), psychiatric care (79 per cent), and prescription drugs (77 per cent). The political parties have not wholly ignored these issues, but neither have they dwelled on them.

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There are strong electoral lessons here. Certainly any opposition party that wages a negative campaign against the Conservatives’ health record has unparalleled room to grow; it is surprising this has not happened already. But the most intriguing result of our poll? By a hair’s breadth, most Canadians (50.1 per cent) prefer a coalition to any one party, with a “traffic light coalition” of Reds, Oranges and Greens being the most popular. Astonishingly, those voters feel more comfortable with a coalition running health care than just their preferred party. Could it be ironically true that health is both the most neglected campaign opportunity for each opposition party, and the glue that could bind them in a coalition if none wins?

Amir Attaran is a professor in the University of Ottawa’s Faculties of Law and Medicine. Frank Graves is a pollster and founder and president of EKOS Research Associates.

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