Mr. Speaker, we are facing a major health care crisis in Canada. This is nothing new to the many people who are waiting for surgery or hospital beds or for the doctors, nurses and hospital support staff.
Since 1995 the Liberal government has slashed $16.5 billion from health and social spending. Now it wants to look like a hero by reinstating taxpayers dollars into the health care budget, dollars it took out.
Heroes do not have to create their own situations to look good. The Liberal government is not a hero when it comes to health care. It is the villain.
Through the Liberals charred earth policy Canada's health care is in jeopardy. In British Columbia patients are being placed not in wards but in linen closets. In my riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan the Nanaimo hospital has been suffering greatly. Over the past two weeks it has had a daily average of 50 people waiting for beds.
In one case a 65 year old woman has been cancelled for hip replacement surgery for the third time. Does she have any comfort waiting in her hospital bed? No. She is on morphine waiting in a wheelchair parked in the hallway—