But to hear Harper tell it, the issue isn’t so much inability to reach compromise as unwillingness to negotiate.

"Shuffling non-critical patients back and forth in a ”hub formation” is not a blessing," Peg Reagan, a Citizens for Healthcare in Ottawa member, writes in a letter to the editor.

"I never cared for report cards," Lonny Cain, retired managing editor of The Times in Ottawa, writes in his Paperwork column.