Madam Speaker, my response to that is to go on to say that again they do not listen to what I am saying. I have asked the Reform Party to explain how it would coerce the provinces into having a uniform list of core services, and it certainly has not answered that. Its type of top down solution is not exactly what I am talking about.
We are getting a strange mixture of things from the Reform Party. On the one hand I heard the leader of the Reform Party go on at length about allowing the provinces to have more flexibility to allow those in the regions to be better able to deliver services. On the other hand his party is asking us to work with the provinces to develop a hard line definition of what is covered and what is not. There would be a list and we would need a whole series of bureaucrats to make sure it is really this and not that and therefore would not be covered. It always astounds me because the Reform Party cannot have it both ways.
By the way, we enforce principles not standards. The Canada Health Act talks about five fundamental principles. Those principles have served us very well.
The type of fear mongering and statements made by the leader of the Reform Party saying that our health care system is not doing well are wrong. While I will admit that changes are needed and we have to continue to work on it, the idea is for us to shape the future of medicare. That is what the provinces, working along with the federal government, are very much working on to deal with the new technologies and to ensure the dollars spent on health go directly to those things that are most needed.
Change is difficult. It is not easy. Throwing more money at it will not make it better. We will end up with a system like the one in the United States. That is exactly what the Reform Party is promoting.