Madam Speaker, this is my opportunity to speak to the prebudget debate. I will be splitting my time with the member for Prince George—Bulkley Valley.
It is easy to criticize a government in power on a big issue like health. I intend not to do too much of that today. I will go over the record of the Liberal government on health and then I will go to the comments of some people in the country as to what they think rather than what I think on this issue.
I was around for the red book. I saw the promises in the red book. The red book promised to preserve and protect medicare and to have a national forum on this issue to be chaired by the Prime Minister. The public took those promises at face value and I expected those promises would be kept.
What have preserve and protect ended up meaning? Over the last three years it has meant $16.5 billion in cumulative cuts. It has meant 188,000 people today on a waiting list for surgical procedures. Over the last two years 1,400 of my colleagues who were trained in Canada and who practised in Canada have left this country never to return. My latest information is that half the medical school students in Canada are now being trained to replace those who are leaving. Those are straightforward facts.
I will go over what a couple of Canadians have said to me recently on this issue. This letter is from somebody who lives in the town in which I practised medicine for over 20 years, a hospital in which I gave this kind of care. She wrote to me saying that on December 15, 1998 she slipped on the ice in front of her home, a fall that caused multiple fractures to her right ankle. She immediately went to the emergency ward at the High River hospital where she received quick, caring and responsive attention. As the break was significant the decision was made to transport her to the Rockyview hospital in Calgary where she, as well as the High River hospital personnel, were under the impression that the surgery would be performed that evening as arrangements had been made by telephone.
She went to Rockyview. The surgery was not performed on the Tuesday. She was reassured the surgery would likely be performed on the Wednesday. This was not the case. She was kept on morphine without seeing a doctor until Friday.
On Friday she asked “Where is my doctor?” He came and told her that he would try to do the surgery that day but that some people in her condition had waited up to two weeks before they could find the time and operating space to perform this operation. She went on to say that luckily she had the surgery that day.
That is absolutely unacceptable in a country like Canada. That would have been so unheard of when I started my practice that the patient would have come to me and said “Grant, that is malpractice”.
Let us think of what she did for those four days. She lay there with the swelling in her ankle worse. She lay in pain on morphine. She did not see a clinician. She saw only the nurses, nurses doing wonderful work. It was unacceptable. She asked me why this was happening in a country like Canada. I leave that to my colleagues across the way.
I also have a letter from somebody in Qualicum Beach, B.C. I picked two letters from the west because they were closest to my home. I get letters like these from every part of the country, from every province and every jurisdiction.
This individual addressed the letter to the Minister of Health. He watched an interview with the minister on January 17 on the CTV program Sunday Edition . He stated that the minister's comments had generated a few questions. I will not go through them all. I will go to the last and the main question. It is the individual's understanding that the federal government contributions toward health care in Canada had been reduced $6 billion per year. He asked if this correct was correct. If so, he asked, why has the government seen fit to increase taxes in over 35 areas during this same period?
He indicated that it appeared the finance minister's so-called balanced budget had been to a large extent achieved through reductions to health care and through increased taxes, not through what he wanted them to do, which was to decrease government waste and a severely bloated bureaucracy. He went on to bemoan the fact that health care would be the place that the Liberals chose to cut.
This is not a politician. This is not somebody with a vested interest other than the fact that some day he may be sick. These letters are coming like a blizzard to my office.
What do the nurses say? They are writing to me and asking me to put questions on the floor of the House of Commons in question period. The first question from RNs in Alberta was: Is the government aware that Canadians' health and well-being are being affected by an impending shortage of registered nurses? They await an answer.
The supplementary question was: Is the government prepared to invest in the future health of Canadians by investing in nurses. They are saying that the percentage of money going to nurses has dropped, that there is a recruitment problem, and that nurses will not go to college to become nurses any more because of these horror stories. They ask whether the health minister knows that qualified RNs are no longer able to deliver safe health care for Canadians.
What do Canada's physicians say? I am just one lone voice. They have an association that involves all health care workers in Canada. I have never seen such unanimity on an issue. They are saying the federal Liberal health care cuts are dreadfully wrong. I will not read what they say. It is very obvious what they say.
It is easy to criticize, is it not? An opposition politicians can stand over here and berate the government for what it has done. I would like to take a bit of a constructive approach then and say what the government should do.
First, we need stable funding for medicare. The health minister said today Reform would not put any more money into medicare. I do not know where he has been. I would like to give his head a shake. Let me give him the information: $6 billion over the next three years is our proposal, to be reinfused directly into medicare. New spending, not a chance; repriorized old spending. That is the difference. These guys only look for new spending. We do not need new spending. They are spending on areas they should never be spending on.
We also need a thorough review of medicare. I had someone on the phone just a few moments ago who said the wagon needed to be stopped and looked at, that funding alone would not fix medicare problems. That is true. We need to put the patient first. Today the bureaucrat, the politician and the medical profession are first in medicare. The patient is not first, and that must change. We need to put more accent on prevention. Also, the government has been very harsh on natural health products.
Reformers have talked a lot about hepatitis C. We need to have, and this is a commitment, a billion dollars of new money put into hepatitis C compensation. I want to spend a moment on hepatitis C, a topic which is very timely. Parliament has not been sitting for a couple of months and there have been some real significant developments in the hepatitis C area.
First is the Arkansas prison connection. Many of us in the country watched a TV show which showed a direct connection between Canadian regulators and dirty prison blood from Arkansas and Louisiana. The RCMP should be looking at that information. There was criminal activity in the hepatitis C issue in Canada.
A big compensation package has just been announced for one small group of infected Canadians. The Hepatitis C Society says it is unacceptable and inadequate. It has major problems with it. It is advising the public not to accept it.
It is very healthy to look at what is happening in other countries on hepatitis C. This is brand new information. Switzerland has just charged the Swiss blood agency with endangering the lives of hemophiliacs. It looks like people will go to jail in Switzerland. Italy has just ruled that the ministry of health must pay compensation to everyone infected by hepatitis C, not just a few. In France people are in jail. The prime minister and health minister in France have both been charged. In Canada we have zip. We do not have anything going on except a few dollars being offered to a few.
The prebudget debate on health care is not over. The government says it will reinvest the pittance it will put in of $1 billion, $2 billion or $3 billion, until just before the next election when it will say it is okay to have angina and give back the money it took. That is not acceptable.