The Saskatchewan premier and CCF leader, voted "the greatest Canadian" for founding socialized medicine. He surfaces in the dialogue's long turn into Canadian political history, where Cameron distinguishes his CCF from the western social-credit parties and recalls that Douglas's medical program drove doctors — his own father among them — out of the province. New to it — start with dialogue 28.
Across the dialogues
Enters through the Canadian-history digression as the popularly canonized father of medicare — the pole around which Cameron sorts out the western parties and his own family's exit
Bob frames Douglas for listeners as the popularly canonized Canadian — half-forgotten yet voted "the greatest Canadian," the father of the country's socialized medicine.
"Canada ran a poll, maybe around 2000, about who was the greatest Canadian,"
Cameron grounds the legend in its cost — the Saskatchewan medical program triggered a doctors' exodus that included his own physician father, giving the medicare story a personal, dissenting edge.
"And eventually became the premier of Saskatchewan and started a medical program in Saskatchewan that was very unpopular with doctors."
Connections
Cameron corrects Bob's party attribution — Douglas is CCF (the socialist tradition), not social credit — and ties him to his own family's departure from Saskatchewan.