Mr. Speaker, March 31, a profoundly important deadline for Canada's medicare system, is approaching.
Earlier this month I asked a question of the Minister of Health concerning the impact of NAFTA on Canada's medicare system. I asked the minister to show some leadership with respect to some very serious differences in interpretation of NAFTA and its impact on the medicare system in Canada.
It was on March 13, the day I asked the question, that a legal opinion was made public by Dr. Brian Schwartz, a respected lawyer. He indicated that there are serious ambiguities in annex II of the NAFTA agreement. He went on to note in his legal opinion that there are a number of grey areas that exist in the health care sector, and that U.S. providers and their federal government will be exerting political and economic pressure on Canada and the provinces to open up markets.
He went on to point out that United States trade representative Mickey Kantor has issued an interpretation of annex II of the NAFTA agreement that is very alarming because it opens wide a tax on Canada's medicare system. Mickey Kantor said that if social services are supplied by a private firm on a profit or not for profit basis, chapter 11 and chapter 12 apply.
In other words, what he is saying is that the United States considers Canadian not for profit health providers subject to the full force of NAFTA's investment and services rule. That means they are wide open to big American for profit corporations to move in on those sectors.
Much of Canada's health care system is delivered through the non-profit sector. A large majority of our health delivery takes place in the private sector through non-profit agencies such as hospitals, labs, nursing homes, community clinics, regional health boards and so on.
If our government and if the Minister of Health do not stand up for Canadian medicare and do not reject this interpretation by the United States trade representative vigorously, it is clear we will open up the Canadian medicare system to U.S. corporate health care giants. We know the power of these giants. They have taken on Bill Clinton on health care reform.
I support the B.C. minister of health, Andrew Petter, who has shown leadership on this issue. I urge the Government of Canada to show the same kind of leadership and to stand up and say we will protect the Canadian medicare system against this kind of narrow interpretation of the United States trade representative.