Mr. Speaker, I want to say how pleased I am to have the opportunity to speak today on this take note debate on health care, although I think the traditional manner in which we express the resolution supporting a take note debate is rather feeble and is inadequate to the challenge that is before us. I just briefly remind all members that the resolution coming from the Minister of Health reads:
That this House take note of the ongoing public discussion of the future of the Canadian health care system.
Feeble and inadequate, to say the least, and I would be a lot happier if we were here today debating a resolution which very clearly expressed the urgency of every member of the House and every party represented in this House to nurse back to a state of health our health care system, the health care system that is the promise and the true benefits of a public, not for profit, comprehensive, universal health care system that Canadians need.
The member for Acadie—Bathurst will be sharing my time and I am very happy to do that. I listened to the question the member for Acadie—Bathurst put to the Bloc member who just spoke. I found it absolutely astounding, and I have to say deeply distressing, that the response of this Bloc member whom I generally admire for his progressiveness was to say to the member for Acadie—Bathurst to mind his own business, not to criticize what the Péquiste government in Quebec is doing on health care, and to only put the challenges to the federal Liberal government.
I have two responses to that. One is that it is precisely a question that is pointing out the weaknesses and inadequacies of what the federal Liberal government is doing on health care, because it is not taking seriously its responsibilities to enforce the standards of the Canada Health Act as it relates to privatization. Second, and I guess the reason I found that response so astounding from the Bloc member, was that in his retort to the member for Acadie—Bathurst he revealed how similar the view of his party is to that of the Canadian Alliance, by basically saying that what happens to health care for people all over this country is not the shared concern and responsibility of every member of the House.
I could not believe my ears when I heard the leader of the Alliance Party, the official opposition, stand up and say basically that people do not care where their health care comes from, they do not care how it is funded, they only care that an individual Canadian, when he or she is sick, is going to get the health care, period, which again shows that it completely lacks an understanding. Yes, individual Canadians, when they are sick, need and deserve health care and of course they are very upset when they are not getting it, but there is a fundamental Canadian value, one that was rejected by the Bloc member in his question, one absolutely rejected by the Canadian Alliance leader in the House today, which is that Canadians care about health care for themselves, but they also care deeply about Canadian health care for their neighbour.
That gets to the real question about the crisis that our medicare system is in. It is not an exaggeration to say that medicare in the country today is at a crossroads. We have a fundamental decision to make about the kind of health care system that we want in the 21st century.
I think that all Canadians are very concerned about the report that is to come from the Romanow commission, not from the backrooms or the inside of the Liberal Party or from a Liberal Senator but from a royal commission that has been given the mandate to go out across this country and invite Canadians' input. I think that Canadians are very concerned about ensuring that this report is given the weight and the careful attention that it desperately needs. Canadians deserve to make this decision about the future of our health care, both on the basis of shared values, which the opposition leader has rejected, and on the basis of solid information.
We have seen too many scare tactics and this has had the effect of stampeding Canadians toward extreme solutions and solutions that have no place in this debate, as we heard this morning.
It is remodelling, not demolition, that should be our watchword. The evidence is clear and convincing. Canadians strongly believe in the fundamental tenets of medicare. A single payer, public not for profit health care system does not solve all the problems because we decide to create that. However it does create the conditions, the possibility, the potential for Canadians to receive the health care they need when they need it, regardless of wealth or privilege and regardless of where they happen to live.
Health care in recent years has fallen short of the goal for far too many Canadians. Starved through cutbacks, Canadian health care has been ill-equipped to grapple with the challenges of increased costs, partially as a result of excessive drug patent protection, but also as a result of medical and technological advances. The result is an intolerable and growing burden, both on patients and on those who care for them.
I could not believe what I heard from the Canadian Alliance member when he said that the health of the system was not a problem and that we were not talking about the health of those who provide the care. Those are critical elements of a universal not for profit system. What does the leader of the official opposition think the health care system is other than those who work in it to prevent ill health and to provide treatment when people are sick and to bring them back to a state of health? Something has to change.
The interim report of the Romanow commission outlined four possible paths for medicare. Let me reiterate that the New Democratic Party of Canada believes that the first two of those paths would lead backward, not forward. They would lead back toward the very for profit health care system that made medicare so necessary in the first place.
Behind the friendly rhetoric of private sector choice lies the simple reality that for profit health care offers less care at a higher cost than public health care. Public sector health care dollars should go to health care, not to marketing campaigns, not to investor relations, not to mergers and acquisitions of health corporations and not to profit. Real world experience backs that up.
In Alberta waiting lists and costs for cataract surgery are greatest wherever private clinics dominate. In the United States for profit dialysis centres, patient death rates are 20% higher than in not for profit centres. U.S. health administration costs are more than double those in Canada. The failure of for profit health care is echoed in efforts to shift costs onto patients and their families. We believe that those efforts are blatantly unfair. They amount to regressive taxation and they hit hardest at those who can least afford them.
Evidence has shown that as well as being unfair these initiatives just do not work. Singapore's experience with medical savings accounts has been a disaster. User fees are no more successful in controlling costs. They discourage lower income patients from seeking the treatment they need for a minor ailment until it becomes a major expensive one.
It is critically important that we not give up the dream for universal, comprehensive, not for profit health care, a system of public health care that calls up among all members the requirement for courage, leadership and vision. It is important that we get on with ensuring that we have a comprehensive system that not only deals with people's illnesses, but also deals with the kind of preventive measures that can only be assured if we recognize the fact that it is the responsibility of government to create a system of health care that will address the need for prevention as well as for treatment for people when they need it, wherever they happen to live, whether they live in a province that is mean-spirited and tight-fisted or a province that understands that priority should be given to health care. We need national standards that will ensure that each Canadian gets the health care they need regardless of where they live. It is everybody's business to be concerned about that issue.