Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Motion No. 3 regarding the proposal to establish an annual report from the Minister of Finance on the adequacy of the cash portion of the Canada health and social transfer to sustain the principles of the Canada Health Act.
As the hon. member for Medicine Hat indicated, the Reform caucus, the official opposition, is opposed to this motion. I recognize there is a worthwhile principle at play here, namely an attempt to increase transparency and accountability in the federal government's management of the CHST cash transfers. Ultimately however we are concerned that this motion would increase the federal government's meddling ability in what is an area of exclusive provincial jurisdiction under our constitutional framework, namely health care.
I do think it is an opportune motion for us to reflect, as the member who spoke just before me did, on the way in which the government has managed the cash transfers to the provinces under the health and social transfer.
In the leaders debate during the 1993 election the current Leader of the Opposition asked the then Leader of the Opposition and now Prime Minister specifically what the Liberal Party's commitment was to the level of federal transfer payments for health care. He asked the now Prime Minister if he would keep transfers at the current level and the now Prime Minister responded “I said yesterday in replying to Monsieur Bouchard that I promise that they will not go down and I hope that we will be able to increase them”.
The current Prime Minister running for office in 1993 representing the entire Liberal Party of Canada and all of its candidates said that he hoped that they would be able to increase them and the health care transfers would not go down. Those were the words he said then, words that were echoed in Liberal red book one which spoke about maintaining the health care transfers at their current level. That came from the leader of a party that spent four and a half years in the House, from 1988 to 1993, relentlessly criticizing the then government for having cut the very same health transfers.
This government has excelled in its acts of political hypocrisy. Among those many acts of political hypocrisy, from the GST to free trade, to NAFTA, perhaps the greatest one of all was for the Liberals to trumpet their traditional Liberal commitment to health care funding but then proceed, once having taken the reins of power, to ruthlessly slash those transfers not by 5% or 10% but by 35%. It was done unilaterally and without consultation or input from the provinces that have to deliver those programs. The $7 billion cut in those transfer payments was passed on to the provincial premiers, governments and legislatures who have to administer those programs.
Very few things get me more upset than hearing Liberal MPs and ministers rise in this House and criticize people like Premier Harris of Ontario for his management of health care. I hear Liberal MP after Liberal MP criticize Premier Harris for having increased health care funding by $1 billion, all the while reducing taxes for Ontarians, while absorbing $2 billion in transfer cuts for health care imposed by the federal government. The hypocrisy is truly shocking.
Hon. members opposite know that it is shocking. I had the great misfortune of attending the Liberal Party of Canada convention down the street. I sat and listened to the resolutions brought before the floor. Very few of them were debated of course. After all, the delegates to that convention know that policy for the Liberal Party is made in the dark backrooms of the Prime Minister's office and not in the front rooms of any convention where the public could actually monitor it.
Liberals were asking “Why did we cut these health care transfers?” That is a good question because there are very few members of this House who are more in favour of cutting government spending than I and my colleagues in the Reform Party.
We believe that when it comes to cutting government spending we have to create priorities. This government chose to make the wrong priorities. When it came to the cash transfers from the CHST the government cut $7 billion instead of cutting $7 billion out of subsidies to crown corporations, out of subsidies to businesses, out of regional development programs, out of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and handouts to the Liberal Party's favourite special interest groups.
That is the choice the Liberal Party made. Yes, it had to cut spending, but no it did not have to cut it from what was the highest priority program area of all Canadians, which is public health care. This government should really hang its head in shame when it comes to considering what it has done to health care in this country.
The other thing I find so remarkably galling is to hear the Minister of Health and his cabinet and caucus colleagues pontificate about the great Liberal commitment to the federal role in health care and that they are going to penalize those provinces if they do not keep in compliance with the Canada Health Act. They are going to protect health care they say.
What have the Liberals done? They and the previous government together have managed to cut the federal government's role in cash transfers for health care from 50% of total acute health care spending to under 20%. The Liberals talk tough but they have taken away the only leverage they have with the provinces to ensure compliance with the Canada Health Act.
I am not sure that that is necessarily a bad thing. I believe as I said in speaking to Motion No. 1, in the principle of subsidiarity, in the principle that says the level of government which is the lowest and the closest to the people is generally the best order of government to deliver services. Senior levels of government, more distant and remote levels of government such as the federal government ought only to be involved in the direct delivery of programs when such delivery needs to be done on a national basis.
I think that MLAs, MPPs and MNAs and provincial governments elected by provincial voters and provincial taxpayers know better than we do in this remote place in Ottawa how to deliver quality health care, public access to universal health care than we do. We ought to give them the flexibility to make the choices they need to reform health care, to ensure quality health care for all Canadians. That is why this motion would simply extend the meddling influence of the federal government in a field which the Fathers of Confederation in their wisdom properly attributed to the provinces.
In closing I hope that if any of the Liberals speak on this motion they will explain to us, to their constituents and to all Canadians how it is they can talk about increasing health care transfers in this budget by $1.5 billion when in fact it is not an increase at all. It is a reduction in the decrease.
It reminds me of the old days when the Tory government would say that it was cutting spending when in fact all it was doing was reducing the increase. Now the Liberals say they are increasing spending on health care when all they are doing is reducing the decrease.
Why can we not just look at these numbers straight and simple? After the so-called $1.5 billion reinvestment in health care in this recent budget, health care transfers, cash transfers to the provinces will still be less than they were four years ago when the Liberals took power in 1993. The Liberals have abdicated their ability to dictate health care policy to the provinces. We say let the provinces be responsible and accountable to their taxpayers, to the real consumers of health care.
That is why I call on my hon. colleagues to defeat this motion.