Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment on medicare and on the way the system is to be restructured. It would deal, as my hon. colleague said just, with some of the structural changes that are necessary to move the system into the 21st century.
The cost of medicare and the changing of some of the ways that the system works, as I said in my speech and as the hon. member just reiterated, have to do with the fact that there are national concerns and a national interest in a new national Department of Health.
Research covers a broad spectrum. There are local areas of research and local areas of health promotion and prevention that must come from the provinces because they deal specifically with issues concerning regional problems, regional environmental issues, and regional and local differences that need to be addressed.
Across the spectrum there are broader issues concerning the whole spectrum of health facing all Canadians. It is efficient and effective for the federal government and for national health to take these issues into consideration. It is effective in that the data collection in one place creates a cost efficiency and a base where everyone can co-ordinate and use the information as they need it, rather than have duplication of service and duplication of information gathering in 12 different areas such as would come about if we allowed each province and each territory to repeat, to duplicate and to reinvent the wheel. They would deal with the broader issues of health care, promotion and prevention that cut across provincial boundary lines and have nothing to do with specific regional and local interests.
There is a specific role for the Government of Canada in research, promotion and programs pertaining to low risk babies. It is common to all Canadians; it is not specific to any one province.
If we are talking about efficiencies and appropriateness of care and appropriateness of effort, we need to focus on them, and it is appropriate for the federal government to do so. It is more appropriate for the federal government to do it than for provinces, as I said before, to deal with it individually. When the ministers of health met in the past they all agreed that it was a very real role.
In terms of safety it is much easier as drugs, devices and foods come into the country for one agency to assess and to deem whether or not they are safe. Goods and services travel across the provinces and therefore go to every person as far away as Prince Edward Island and Vancouver Island. Therefore safety should be carried across Canada so that there is one level of safety and it is not spottily done in different areas of the country.
The national interest of health and the need for a national Department of Health are not intrusive. It is an appropriate way for the federal government to look after safety, health promotion and prevention.