Mr. Speaker, I have listened to this prebudget debate all day, and frankly I cannot believe how shortsighted and irresponsible the Liberals are.
The government is prepared, if we listen to its comments, to sit idly by and oversee the death of medicare. I thought we were here today to talk about the future, and for sure one of the important issues of the future is to take medicare into the new millennium.
This is the government that cut $6.2 billion out of transfer payments in 1995. In the last budget it put back in half of what it took out and stretched it out over five years. It has taken 50:50 cost shared arrangements down to, if we really stretch it, a 15% federal share of health care spending in the country. No wonder we have Ralph Klein in Alberta threatening to privatize the system and destroy our universal health care system because the government has nothing with which to stand up in the face of that.
I ask the member very specifically whether the government will have the responsibility to put back at least $1.5 billion into transfer payments for health care. Will it have the integrity to keep to its promises of the last election and the election before that for national home care and pharmacare? Will it have some vision to ensure that we can carry medicare into the new millennium?