Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the words of the member for Bourassa. I wonder if he could clarify a few things.
He again reminds us that he is a sovereignist. I do not know what that has to do with this bill. I would remind him to reflect on the words the former Premier of Quebec and his own leader used about the kinds of people they want to live in that part of Canada. So when he says he is a sovereignist, I assume he means that he is a Canadian sovereignist.
I get this feeling in statements in the foreign affairs committee and in the House that to that party everything seems to be a provincial jurisdiction. There seems to be nothing left for the federal government and provinces to co-operate on. Here is a bill that calls for co-operation to maintain health standards across Canada and keep costs down, and the hon. member cannot even support that.
He quoted from clause 2. I refer him to paragraph (i), where the minister's powers, duties, and functions relating to health include "co-operation with provincial authorities with a view to the co-ordination of efforts made or proposed for preserving and improving public health". Is the hon. member honestly against this kind of a bill?
He also went on to say that he is against the two-tier system. Great, I agree with him. So am I, and so is everyone on this side of the House, the government side. How does he expect to prevent the two-tier system if he allows health care to be the total responsibility of the province?
My wife happens to live in Ontario and her brothers live in Quebec. Their mother used to switch from Quebec to Ontario. She would live at her son's at one time and at her daughter's another time. If each province is responsible for its own health system, their mother could not have done that. Under the present system she was able to move from province to province and have her prescriptions, doctor bills, and everything covered. Thank God, she lived to 89. She had gone through Siberia and had the kind of life that no one would want to hear about in this House. Yet she lived in this country happily until she was 89 because of the health system in this country and because of the standards that were kept from province to province.
I would like the hon. member to clarify what he means. He is against the two-tier system, yet he wants no federal involvement at all. How does he expect to maintain Canadian standards if he wants health to be the sole jurisdiction of the provinces?