Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on behalf of my caucus today on the Bloc motion, which I will read for the record:
That this House urges the government to respect provincial jurisdiction over health care management, to increase transfers to the provinces for health care unconditionally, and to avoid using budget surpluses to encroach upon the health care field.
I listened very carefully to what my Bloc and Reform colleagues had to say. I do not want to suggest that I did not listen carefully to what the government had to say. In any event, there is much I agree with in what they had to say about the effect of federal cutbacks on health care services in the various provinces, and much that I agree with in the outrage and disapproval they expressed about those cutbacks and the way in which the Liberal government got away with doing severe damage to our health care system without really paying a price or even acknowledging or having acknowledged just what it is that it has done over the last few years through the removal of several billions of dollars from the health care system which cumulatively is well beyond several.
The figure used by my Reform colleague was something in the neighbourhood of $16 billion. It is very large. Any other government that had done the same thing would certainly have paid a higher price than this government has been asked to pay so far. I say “so far” because I think eventually the Canadian people will realize what is going on here.
I differ with the Bloc on its motion. It is not a motion that the NDP can support. I differ with my Reform colleague in his expression of support for the motion. The Reform spokesperson said that the Bloc motion talks about not having any new conditions on health care spending. I am sorry, but that is not what the motion says.
The motion says “to increase transfers to the provinces for health care unconditionally”. It does not say increase transfers to the province for health care without any new conditions. It says “unconditionally”.
Had the motion said what it says but nevertheless went on to affirm the Canada Health Act and the need for nationwide standards, national standards when it comes to health care, it might have been a motion that would be supportable. However it does not do that.
I listened very carefully to both the Bloc spokespersons and my Reform colleague. Neither one of them ever uttered the words Canada Health Act. Neither one of them ever uttered the words national standards. I do not think this is a coincidence. I think we see here an alignment between—it is no secret—the Bloc and the Reform parties when it comes to matters of provincial jurisdiction, particularly with regard to health care and a position mutually held with respect to the role of the federal government in health care. It is not a position that is held by the New Democratic Party. We could not bring ourselves to vote for a motion that in any way called into question implicitly or explicitly the continuing role of the Canada Health Act and the continuing need for national standards when it comes to medicare and health care. We will vote against the motion.
It was interesting to listen to the government spokesperson on this matter going on and on about the Canada Health Act. I support the Canada Health Act. I was here at the time it was created. I sat on the health and welfare committee when the bill went through and remember that whole process very well.
There are two things I have to say to the Liberals in this regard. First, they were dragged into the Canada Health Act kicking and screaming. It took four years of work in parliament exposing the problem of extra billing by physicians and the proliferation of user fees in the health care system that was happening at that time to finally get the Liberal government to act on the eve of the federal election in 1984. The Canada Health Act was passed in April 1984 and the election was called in July of that year.
The Liberals were dragged into the Canada Health Act kicking and screaming by their own acknowledgement. A memoir written by then Liberal Minister of Health Monique Bégin gives credit to the NDP for, in her words, waging guerrilla warfare against her in the House of Commons and forcing her to act. Those were her own words in her own book about the role of the NDP at that time. I will not go into who was the health critic at that time.
It is one thing to listen to the Liberals go on about the Canada Health Act and how much they stand by it. However Canadians should be reminded that this was something at the time that was not done wholeheartedly. In the closing hours of that debate on the Canada Health Act I remember saying as the NDP health critic that no amount of principles, no amount of standards enshrined in the Canada Health Act or anywhere else, rhetorically, would save medicare if there were not sufficient funding and that without sufficient funding medicare would slowly fade away. This is indeed what is happening. This is the heinous political crime being visited upon Canadian history by the Liberals.
It is a terrible irony when we think of how much credit they like to give themselves. The other day I think it was the Minister of Finance who was saying how it was the Liberals who brought in medicare. Actually the Liberals first promised medicare in their election platform of 1919 and by 1966, some 47 years later, they had finally delivered on that promise in the context of a minority government where the NDP held the balance of power and after medicare had been pioneered and all the dirty work had been done in Saskatchewan by Tommy Douglas and the NDP.
Do not give us that hokum about the Liberals having anything to do with the beginnings of medicare or hospitalization for that matter which in my reading of Canadian history actually became law under a Conservative government and not a Liberal government.
The Liberals are by their fiscal actions slowly, and in recent years not so slowly, starving medicare to death. My Reform colleague pointed out polls that show Canadians are increasingly anxious about their health care system, that they have less and less confidence in Canada's health care system. It is not surprising because there has been a deterioration in service. The evidence is there anecdotally, empirically and in every respect.
Every one of us knows someone who has been in the hospital in recent years or months. They all have stories to tell. They all have stories about dedicated health care workers, about people working very hard, but they also have stories to tell about gaps in the system thanks in many ways to the cuts that have been visited upon our health care system.
If the quality of our health care system runs down, if we have waiting lists as we do and if people spend days on gurneys in emergency wards, sooner or later it is only a matter of time before enough Canadians say that they want to have some private alternative to this service and do not want to be completely dependent on a service that is going down, down and down.
That is the crime the Liberals are visiting upon medicare and upon our country. They are creating the conditions for the privatizers who have never gone away. The big health care insurance industry is still out there and still licking its wounds from its defeat in the sixties. It is not that long ago as politics go. It sees its opportunity, and it is an opportunity being created by the federal Liberals. They ought to be ashamed of themselves for creating that opportunity.
They certainly should not have the nerve to stand in the House as they do from time to time—the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Health and others—and pretend they are the great defenders and saviours of medicare. If they do not do a complete turnaround in this regard, and if the Canadian people do not make them do so if they do not choose to, it will be the Liberals and no one else that go down as the political party that destroyed medicare.