Mr. Speaker, before I begin I would like to commend my hon. colleague from North Vancouver because he laid bare in the House a personal health care matter. I say to the people across the way who have
been heckling him that if he had not gone down to the United States he would be dead today. It is a very real example of how our health care system failed him as it fails other Canadians from coast to coast. The reason why he was able to have a life saving operation in the United States was because he had the money. That is what the government is preserving today. It is preserving a system that enables the rich to get better health care than the poor.
Today we are dealing with Bill C-95, an act to establish the Department of Health. It is a housekeeping bill, a bill of wordsmithing, a bill that changes words, a bill that does not have anything to do with devolution of powers, nothing to do with personnel changes, nothing to do with any vision to save health care in this country; health care I might add that is in critical condition and needs emergency help.
It is profoundly tragic that we have this bill in front of us. In the last two years the Minister of Health has yet to put a single piece of legislation on the table to amend and improve health care for Canadians, Bill C-7 notwithstanding, which did not come from her department but came from another source.
The minister keeps on saying that we do not have a problem, that we are moving toward reorganization. She claims that Reform members are in favour of a system that prevents access for the poor. The problem is access. Canadians are not getting access to essential health care services from coast to coast. That is the problem. The government is defending a health care system that is crumbling from within.
I will give a little background. When the Canada Health Act was written in 1984, the people who wrote it with very noble intentions simply could not envision the increasing costs, the increasing demands and the changing demographics of an aging population. That was not envisioned. Today we are using a health act organized over a decade ago to deal with problems that did not exist then. Therefore we see the failure that the Canada Health Act has in trying to address the problems that we have today.
If we continue to pursue the course we are on now we will not have a health care system in this country. We will only see people suffering to varying degrees. Those who will suffer the most are those who are the poorest. I will give an example.
Operating rooms are closing across the country. They are closing because hospitals have to save costs. However, waiting lists are increasing. In the hospital in British Columbia where I worked patients decided to have their own blood transfused and banked for operations in case they needed it. It cost the patient $125. The Minister of Health in British Columbia, Mr. Ramsey said: "No, you can't do that because it contravenes the Canada Health Act". One month later we had an acute blood shortage in British Columbia.
I had patients with fractured hips, bleeding to death, with low haemoglobins and no blood was available. If the province had allowed the autologous blood transfusions we would not have had that problem. Is that access? I hardly think so.
In Victoria the wait for radiation therapy for prostate cancer is 16 months. What happens? Patients are sent down to Washington state where an entire industry has grown to serve Canadians. Is that Canadian access?
People with carpal disorder in the wrists have to wait six months before they have surgery. They are off work six months. This surgery could be done in a private clinic within two weeks. Is that access?
Imagine one of your grandparents needs a hip transplant,Mr. Speaker, and is in severe pain. If they live in British Columbia, 40 per cent will wait over 13 months to get that hip replaced and all of that time they are in pain. Is that access? Not at all.
The health care system is falling apart. To get around this, those who are rich go down to the United States for their health care needs. The politicians in this government say that the Canada Health Act is sacrosanct. They say: "We the government are defenders of the health care for all Canadians because we want to ensure that they have access, because we don't want those terrible Reformers amending the Canada Health Act and having an American style system that enables only the rich to have access while the poor suffer". That is the complete opposite to what we have.
My colleagues and I never got involved in this matter to destroy health care. We saw the suffering occurring in emergency rooms in hospitals across the country. We got involved to save health care. We recognize there is a problem. We do not want to destroy health care. We got involved to amend the Canada Health Act to ensure that all Canadians, regardless of income, have their health care services performed in a timely fashion. My colleagues and I have given examples to indicate that is simply not occurring.
We have proposed a system that would amend the Canada Health Act to allow for private clinics. Basically people could pay money to a private clinic for health care services. Not a single penny of the taxpayers' money would go into the system. Is it an unequal system? Yes, it is. However, is it not better to have an unequal system with better access for all people than the relatively similar access we have today that provides for declining access for all Canadians. In the present system the rich can go to the United States for their health care services while those in Canada suffer and die.
In Toronto, where I trained, the waiting list for coronary artery bypass grafting is seven months. People are dying waiting for bypass surgery. I know a similar example happened in 1986 when I was finishing my training in British Columbia where men and
women in their fifties were dying waiting for bypass surgery in Vancouver. That is not access.
We have declining funds and increasing demands, but caught in the middle is the most important element of all, the patients who are sick, scared and worried. Their families are worried and scared. At a time of their greatest need our health care system may fail them. That is not what we want. That is not what Canadians want. That is not what the government wants. That is certainly not what the Reform Party wants.
I implore the Minister of Health and the government to stop the political rhetoric. Let us move away from political postering. Let us work together to build a new Canada Health Act that enables all Canadians from coast to coast to obtain their health care services in a timely fashion. We want to protect medicare, not destroy it.
We cannot sacrifice, as my hon. colleague from Macleod said, the most important social program we have today, the health care system. We simply cannot let that program, which is a defining characteristic of Canada, disappear. We must preserve it because it is the most valuable thing each and every one of us have as individuals.
As an aside I ask the hon. minister to look at some interesting work being done by one of the greatest minds in the country, Dr. Fraser Mustard. In Toronto he looked at the determinants of health care. He has a new vision with respect to health care. The determinants of health care are somewhat different from what we have seen in the past. A investment in the early development of children will pay Canadian society in many aspects in the long run.
I implore the minister to look at the work this man has done because it is ground breaking and something we can incorporate federally and provincially into the health care programs that exist today.
The government also needs a fiscal plan. As we unfortunately saw about six weeks ago, the IMF downgraded us by 50 per cent, saying very clearly to the Minister of Finance that if we do not get a plan to decrease the debt Canada would be in very serious and dire straits. We can read into it that our social programs will be in dire straits. Nobody in the House wants to see that. We want to preserve them in a financially sustainable fashion. Health care will suffer the same blows as all other social programs. Unfortunately sick people are the ones who will suffer.
I implore the hon. Minister of Health to speak to the Minister of Finance and other cabinet ministers to look at our zero in three plan and utilize aspects of it to put our fiscal house in order.
One of my colleagues said today that rather than amending the Canada Health Act we need to look to preventive measures. That is all well and true. However, will prevention lower taxes on tobacco? Is prevention cutting the tobacco reduction strategy by 50 per cent? Is prevention putting legislation programs and plans in place that are actually increasing tobacco consumption, especially among the youth, by 10 per cent or 15 per cent.