Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to this very important bill. We are talking today about medical research. We would all agree there is very little that is more important in the country than medical research and other things that lead to better health and good health care.
Every one of us could probably draw on personal experience to point to examples of families that have needed good health care. Every one of us could probably point to a family member who has died because the research had not been done which could make progress, make changes and advance medical capability to a point where it could save lives.
This is a very serious subject. It touches every one of us. It touches our families. For that reason the Reform Party takes it as a very serious issue. We do generally support the bill although we do have some proposals for change.
I will talk a bit on what the bill is about. Many past speakers have spoken to very important aspects of the bill but have not really explained what the bill is about. The bill will establish the Canadian institutes of health research. Its purpose is to put in place a medical research body which will excel according to internationally accepted standards of scientific excellence. This is an important point.
We have some concern about whether it will work in the way it is intended to work, but funds will be targeted based on standards of scientific excellence. That is a very important factor. Let us look at legislation passed in the House. We can point to several different pieces of legislation. Too often the government puts forth legislation which does not consider sound science as a basis.
I could certainly point to the gun bill. In spite of the sound science presented when the bill was being debated, the government pushed ahead, ignored the science and put in place a bill which was flawed right from the fundamental concept. No one would argue that the process of registering guns is in a state of disaster right now. Part of the reason is that the bill ignored the sound science presented from the start. At least the government is presenting a bill which will consider sound standards of science in allocating funds. The importance of this cannot be overstated.
The second purpose of the bill as stated by the government is to provide more effective health services and products in a strengthened Canadian health care system. I will speak a bit more about that in a couple of minutes.
The third stated objective of the bill is important as well. It will provide a more direct and systematic approach to research in Canada. I have heard calls for this approach, particularly by people in the area of research.
There is something that I am not convinced is in the bill and I have heard criticism in this regard. I want people in research fields to be assured, if they are doing research in a very important area which has been targeted for funds, that their funds will be allocated in the long term rather than just year to year. Researchers spend more of their time trying to justify getting the funds for next year than actually ensuring that they will do highly successful research which will lead to better health care.
This stated objective or reason for the bill is honourable. I am looking for it to be put in practice. I am not convinced it will be the case, but I am certainly hoping from the bottom of my heart that it will be the case.
I also want to talk briefly about the financial cost allocated to the bill: for the first year, $374 million and for the second year, $500 million. That is a lot of money. When I think of other ways the government spends $500 million I cannot help but think that it sounds like an awful paltry sum. When we look at the heritage department and the way it blows hundreds of millions of dollars every year, the $500 million allocated to research sounds like a small amount of money.
When we look at the amount of money being allocated to the CBC as a partially publicly funded network, we realize it is a billion dollars a year, or twice the amount that will be allocated to medical research under the bill in the second year and almost three times the amount that will be allocated in the first year.
Then we wonder about priorities, especially when I believe the CBC could be a very profitable TV network if it were to become a network which operated in the business world without public funding. Many would argue that is long overdue. When we look at the billion dollars of public funds put into the CBC and the $374 million to be allocated to research under this bill, the amount of funding is questionable. It is a matter of government priorities.
The priorities do not seem to be well thought out. There is a lot of wasted spending. The government proposed new programs which I believe will not benefit families in a significant way. In fact they will be harmful in some cases and will cost billions of dollars a year. Yet $374 million have been allocated to research. Where is the balance? Where are the priorities? Who is setting these priorities? It can be demonstrated very clearly that the government is not doing a very good job of that at all.
Government members did speak to the bill, but I note they are not speaking to it any more. Many of them talked about the high priority of health care for the government. They pointed to the fact that they would increase spending between the first year and the second year under this program from $374 million to $500 million.
I remind Canadians that this is the same government that reduced spending for health care by about $5 billion a year when it reduced transfers to the provinces for health care. Then it put $374 million, a small portion of that amount, into the proposed program. We have to ask what kind of commitment the government has made to health care. The answer is obvious that it has not made a reasonable commitment at all, Mr. Speaker. I see you agreeing with me on these points. I really appreciate that.
We can take it back another step, back 30 years to when the health care act was signed or medicare was put in place. At that time the federal government was absolutely committed to funding half of the public health care program. Is the federal government still funding half as it did in that first year? No. In fact its portion of funding is now down to about 11% rather than the 50% it committed to, and it has been a Liberal government over most of this time. That is the kind of commitment it has to health care.
It giveth a bit of taxpayer money with one hand and then it taketh away from us on the other hand. It spends the money that should be designated to health care on what many Canadians and I would consider to be wasted spending. Clearly the government is not doing a good job of setting spending priorities. Clearly it is not committed to health care funding.
I will touch on the brain drain. I acknowledge up front that most of the brain drain is happening because of high taxes. Most of us could look to our families and see a family member who has left the country. I am referring to doctors or other professionals, for example. My brother is a doctor, an emergency specialist. He and three other doctors set up the emergency services at the Red Deer hospital about 15 years ago. He had to leave this year because he had a certain retirement expectation. Because of high tax levels, because the government was taking 70% of what he earned, he felt that in order to retire at the level he expected he would have to work in another country. We are supposed to have a maximum rate of 50%, but the government was taking 70% from him.
He and many of his friends are now working in Saudi Arabia where they are taxed at the level of 5%. He is no longer a resident of Canada. He is not proud of that. He is not happy with that. He is committed to Canada. He wants to be a Canadian citizen, and he is, but he cannot live in Canada because of the high tax levels.
As well as taxes, the poor funding of research has led to the brain drain. That has to be acknowledged. This will help in a small way, and I want to acknowledge that.