Mr. Speaker, we have been giving constructive solutions. At the end of my speech I stated that members of the Reform Party would be more than willing to help get the Canadian health care system back on its feet and to ensure that medicare is provided in a fiscally sustainable fashion in the future. Obviously somebody is not listening.
We talk about essential health care services and who is not getting them. I can give the House cases. I have just mentioned the three-week waiting list for urgent heart surgery in Alberta. If that is not an essential health care service and irresponsibility I do not know what it is. The physicians who are dealing with these patients-the member knows because she is a physician-would be more than happy to inform her that this is completely inadequate. This is not something happening only in Alberta but it is going on across the country. In Ottawa it is a five-month wait for open heart surgery and in B.C. it is a thirteen-month wait for people who are in severe pain.
What the member and the government have been saying is that the government will decide what the patient needs. The government will decide what the public can and cannot do with their health care system and for their health. How arrogant to do this when health care is that which is most important to all of our hearts. That is irresponsible.
I would be more than happy to provide a long list to the hon. member of situations that demonstrate the fact that our current medicare system is not working.