Madam Speaker, like my colleague from the Reform Party, I did not plan to speak on the motion put forward by the New Democratic Party, but what I have heard the secretary of state and member for Stoney Creek say just made my hair, or what is left of it, stand on end.
I have heard things that verge on misleading statements. I have heard things that totally contradicted—I hope it was by ignorance, not by maliciousness or to be dishonest either—the facts and figures that have been presented to us since 1995 in the successive budgets brought down by the Minister of Finance.
My colleague from the Reform Party touched on the issue. I would like to go into it in a little more detail.
In 1995, when the Minister of Finance brought down his budget, it provided for cuts to be made systematically every year until 2003 in what came to be known as the Canada social transfer. This Canada social transfer was designed to fund provincial initiatives in higher education, social assistance and health.
In 1995, the Minister of Finance pressed the start button for systematic cuts to be made year after year until 2003, cuts totalling $6 billion each year in higher education, social assistance and health.
Now they come up with this Bill C-28. What does Bill C-28 say? It says, and I agree with my colleague from the New Democratic Party on this, that instead of cutting a total amount of $48 billion between now and the year 2003, cutting $48 billion in higher education, social assistance and health, the government will only be cutting $42 billion. And we are supposed to applaud! I find it totally abhorrent to present things in such a way, to use them to trick the public, because that is what is being done right now.
It is not true that there is $6 billion more for health care. It is not true that there will be $1.5 billion more in the coming years for health care. There will, instead, be $6 billion in cuts for every year between now and 2003, and a sizeable amount of that will be in health care. That is reality.
At the same time as health care is being slashed, we are being told that $1.5 billion is being added yearly for the next three years. The truth is that they are cutting $6 billion per year in social programs and health. Let them stop trying to fill the public's heads with nonsense, let them stop expecting the public to swallow any old thing they present it with.
The cause of the present sorry state of the health system is not Minister Rochon in Quebec, nor the other provincial health ministers. The main responsibility lies with the federal government. The little band-aid solution offered during the last election campaign in response to the heavy pressures for something to be done, that $1.5 billion was just a drop in the bucket, barely remedying an iota of the pillage the government had wrought in the health field. That is the reality.