Mr Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member and concur with her comments about the hypocrisy of this Liberal government in claiming to be the great defenders of transfers to the provinces for health care just after having slashed several billions of dollars in such transfers. I think she made the point eloquently, a point with which we agree. I would however like to correct the record on a couple of points.
The hon. member suggested in her remarks that the Reform Party proposes to eliminate the equalization program and payments. That is inaccurate. We have proposed to reduce those payments by some 12% which is hardly the 100% she suggests. It is 12% because we believe that in one of the wealthiest countries in the world there really are not seven legitimate have not provinces. We believe those benefits would be better focused on the very poorest provinces as opposed to taking from two or three provinces and spreading them among seven or eight.
The hon. member also suggested that the Reform Party proposes the adoption of a free market American style health care system. That as well is inaccurate. First of all, roughly half of the American health care spending is funded by the public sector through medicaid, medicare and other programs.
That aside, the Reform Party supports a universal publicly accessible health care system. But we support a system which provides quality care, accessible to all, unlike the kind of care provided today in the socialist utopias of Saskatchewan and British Columbia where waiting lists continue to grow, where rationing is increasingly a problem, where expensive diagnostic infrastructure is less and less available to the people who need it and where specialists continue to leave for more hospitable health care systems.
The hon. member being from the NDP hardly has a clean record in her own party's management of the health care system. Therefore I think she ought to be somewhat tempered in her remarks.