Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to discuss the Bill C-76 motions that deal with provincial transfer payments and more specifically the Canada health and social transfer.
A number of Reform motions are designed to remove the government's ability to unilaterally decide what constitutes the violation of national standards, for instance in the Canada Health Act, and to unilaterally decide what the financial penalty should be.
The Reform Party has proposed amendments that would force the federal government to take provincial governments to court for alleged violations of national program standards and would subsequently allow the courts, not cabinet, to determine any penalties.
Our second goal is to prevent the federal government from imposing additional unilateral national standards like cross-country welfare rates without the consent of all the provinces. Clause 48, for example, uses the phrase "by mutual consent" in the context of additional national standards and criteria for services. This would in effect permit the Minister of Human Resources Development to proclaim new standards in welfare without the consent of the province of Alberta or Quebec, for instance.
In committee both Reform and Bloc members questioned government witnesses as to the intent of the mutual consent clause and how it would work. Would the government, for example, seek unanimous consent from the provinces when it changed national standards, or would it use the seven out of ten provinces rule representing over 50 per cent?
What does this mutual consent clause really mean? Mr. Speaker, with the bank of lawyers we have working for the government you would think this clause would be made more clear. I guess that is why we have a justice lawyer suing the government for boredom for lack of work.
The bottom line is that Reform's amendments ensure Canadians that clause 48 will not be brought in as an excuse by any cabinet minister to set out national standards unilaterally without the consent and co-operation of the provinces.
Another concern of ours is that the motive underlying many of these changes and the creation of the Canada health and social transfer is to provide the federal government with a bigger stick to whip dissident provinces into line. For example, in Motion No. 57 we propose to delete a section of clause 51 that would allow the federal government to withhold equalization payments and other provincial transfers for violations of the Canada health and social transfer conditions. In other words, this clause would allow the federal government to withhold cash from other programs even after the cash component of the Canada health and social transfer has been exhausted.
Reform wants to move in the other direction, toward unconditional provincial transfers. Let us move control over our social programs closest to the level that administers them. Let us rethink the way the federal government provides services to Canadians.
This Liberal government promised to provide a new blueprint for social reform. That promise, like so many, was broken when the Minister of Human Resources Development failed to deliver on his green paper. There was a promise not to increase the tax load on the long-suffering, overtaxed Canadian taxpayer. It was broken to the tune of $500 million a year with the imposition of a 1.5 cent per litre tax on gasoline and the elimination of PUITTA, the public utilities income tax transfer, also in Bill C-76.
There was a promise of a more open Parliament where MPs would be free from party discipline. This was broken when Liberal MPs who voted against the government's gun control bill were stripped of their committee positions.
Now we are debating a bill that continues the trend of breaking promises that have been made to Canadians. In 1960 Prime Minister Pearson promised the provinces the federal government would pay 50 per cent of the costs of national health care. This was the condition insisted on by the provinces and promised by the federal government. Without this promise the provinces would not have agreed to national medicare. For example, the 1966 medical
care act clearly states that "the amount of the contribution payable by Canada to a province in respect to a medical care insurance plan is an amount equal to 50 per cent". That is still in the act.
What is the state of that sacred promise today? Today the federal government's contribution to health care funding is not 50 per cent, as promised; it is now less than 23 per cent and falling. Because it is breaking its fundamental financial promise, the federal government is slowly undermining the other principles of medicare: it undermines accessibility as waiting lists get longer and longer; it undermines comprehensiveness as more and more health services are delisted from provincial insurance plans; it undermines universality as the system evolves into a multi-tier system with access to the various tiers being tied increasingly to ability to pay.
The fact is that Canada already has a multi-tiered health care system, which the Minister of Health chooses to ignore, access to which has been made more restricted by rising health care costs and declining federal support. The challenge is to reform medicare so that one of those tiers can contain all the essential health services required by Canadians, financed by sufficient federal and provincial funding so that no Canadian is denied access because of inability to pay.
Canadians are asking and will continue to ask when real health care and social reform are going to come, and from where? This is not going to come from this federal government under the current Prime Minister, Minister of Health, or Minister of Human Resources Development. They resist every proposal for change. They charge anyone who advocates change with being an enemy of medicare or in favour of social programs that favour the rich.
The Liberals were only dragged into the discussion of health and social reforms because their officials kept telling them that if they did not do something the system was going to collapse and they would carry the blame.
Like all previous governments, all they have done is study the issue. That fiasco held by the social reform people of the human resources development commission who went across the country loaded with paid people to show up and private interest groups presenting their points of view was a complete scam and sham. Nothing fruitful has come from that.
As well, the 1995 federal budget is a perfect example of the fact that the government has no real vision for our social programs and therefore picks the simplest route. It cuts funding to the provinces while at the same time failing to give them more flexibility in administering the lesser amounts it is granting to the provinces. What a simple solution: give less, say less, let the provinces handle the problem. That is not the kind of leadership the Reform Party feels Canadians want, nor is it the kind of leadership the Reform Party will provide when it becomes the government.
Quite simply, the Liberals want to have their cake and eat it too. The provinces are no longer buying this. In fact, I believe that if in 1960 the provinces and Canadians could have foreseen the monopoly Ottawa has today on setting the terms and conditions of health care services and financing, then the present medicare system would not have come into being in the first place.
The provinces need to be given more control over their affairs. If they do not then our social system will continue in a downward spiral to a point where fundamental programs like universal health care can no longer be afforded by or provided to Canadians by any government.
My concerns are very simple. When this bill was in the standing committee on finance being reviewed, the officials and the minister appeared at that committee. We were discussing this very clause, clause 48. We asked the minister what his officials determined was meant by mutual consent. The Canada Health Act is in place. The five principles are there and they are a sacred trust. Everybody in Canada believes in those five principles. We are not going to quibble about those five principles. However, by denying the provinces the flexibility to determine how to pay for some of these, as I pointed out in my speech, the government is hurting them, not helping them. By insisting that we still need universality and by insisting that the provinces have to follow these rules and Alberta has to close some clinics that people pay for, it certainly means to me that the Liberals do not want solutions, they just want control, for no reason.
Now we have something called the Canada health and social transfer, which means downloading the problems to the provinces and giving them less money. The government can now cut its budget, solve its problems and look good. In the meantime, the provinces will struggle.
In the standing committee we pointed out that there will have to be new social programs in order to address our spending on welfare and unemployment because the needs of the Canadian people are important. When we do discuss those and the provinces then look at the money and funds they have available, what are they to do? Are they to then decide what they want to do, with one province doing this and another doing that, and then the federal government tells them it will not give them the money because it calls the shots and it decides what the principles are they have to follow?
If the government does not like the principles it does not have to give to the provinces. If the provinces breach any of the rules in the program, for instance in health care, it is not only not going to give that amount of money for health care but it will cut the provinces off on other programs. That is way too much power. It is ridiculous and unnecessary.
What the Liberals said in committee was that their intent of mutual consent was that the provinces agree. They will not force anything onto the provinces that the provinces do not agree to. Is that really what the federal government means and what it wants done? I asked this in the standing committee and the government
turned it down. Therefore, I question if that is really what this government wants.
This is what the government turned down. If verbally the government is promising to Canadians in a standing committee that nobody knows or hears about that mutual consent means that the provinces have to agree, then why not change the one word mutual to unanimous? If the government intends for all the provinces to agree, change the word mutual to unanimous.
With unanimous consent, now the government has the written agreement that goes along with the verbal agreement of this government and a solution to the problem. In this way, Quebec is happy, Alberta is happy, Ontario is happy, all the provinces are happy. But this government does not want to do that. This just points out to me that it will say something verbally, and a verbal promise is as strong as a written promise. It is on the record.
We voiced our concerns about that clause, that amendment. We will use the quotation of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance in which he promised mutual consent means the provinces must agree. In the future if the provinces do not agree and the government forces them, it will once again have broken another promise.