Mr. Speaker, it was a fascinating discourse from my colleague across the way.
The question that is being asked here is, should the government be able to put new conditions on health care spending. The Bloc members have made it very plain. They have asked:
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 want to say initially that the problems with medicare are not unique to Canada, they are worldwide. They are actually a little worse here in Canada because of our debt problem and the interest on the debt which gobbles up a fair amount of funding that could go to social programs. But worldwide we have aging populations. We have new technology and new procedures that are really quite expensive and were never dreamed of when medicare came into being. Here in Canada we have a medical legal system that requires defensive practice which increases the costs of medicare. We really have fairly restrictive policies in Canada when it comes to a safety valve.
Although this has been done a host of times, I would like to recapture what has happened over the last few years with medicare. The Liberals promised to protect and enhance medicare in the red book. They very quickly thereafter went through some cuts which were substantial; $16.5 billion in cumulative cash which would have gone directly toward these social programs, so important they say to the public, since they took office. They hid those cuts under the Canada health and social transfer.
I give the Liberals a bit of respect on this issue. They are crafty. They are really quite sneaky in the way they did this. It escaped largely the public's attention because the reductions were not specific to health. It has only been very lately that the public has become aware that the federal government pays less for medicare than do patients out of their own pockets.
Those words came from the federal Minister of Health, that Canadians from their pockets or private insurance pay today more for health care than does the federal government. I say, judge them not by what they said, but judge them by what they did. In other words, their actions speak much louder than than their words.
It is easy to compare Canada with other countries. We dropped from second to fourth in the world in per capita spending on health care and that is directly related to those cuts. It is also interesting that Canada is now the 23rd lowest out of 28 countries in the OECD in terms of public spending for health care. In the last two years 1,400 of our most useful health practitioners have left to go elsewhere.
These statistics really do not tell the story. The 200,000 patients on the waiting line do not talk at all about the pain, the inability to work, the inability to function and the denial of timely care.
I received a letter this morning from a Manitoba women. She was diagnosed with possible bladder cancer. She needed an MRI. The waiting list for the MRI in her province was too long to be medically acceptable. Her sister who lives in Burnaby, B.C. spent $2,500 of her money and the woman had her MRI a day later. The diagnosis was cancer. The treatment was therefore available to her in a short period of time.
This is a question that I pose to my Liberal colleagues, who have escaped the criticism because the provinces received it: Did their cuts have anything to do with that woman's inability to get her MRI in a timely fashion? She has figured it out. She said plainly in her letter “I know that the federal government has a responsibility here”. She also knows that Manitoba is spending more on health care today than it was in 1995, as is Ontario.
I listen to my colleagues say “Those hackers in Ontario have ruined the health care system”. Because of these cuts there have been significant changes. But today Ontario spends $1.5 billion more in health care than it did in 1995. Liberal government cuts to Ontario alone have totalled $3 billion. Every province in Canada, but for Quebec and New Brunswick, today is spending more on health care than in 1995, in spite of those cuts. That is a fascinating indictment. The provinces know where the important programs are. I still do not know why they were cut.
The parliamentary secretary said that Canadians are comfortable with health care and that they value this program more than anything. It is true. But there is a very recent change in public attitude on health care. This is a warning for my colleagues across the way. There have been three polls conducted in the last five months since October 1998.
The Harvard School of Public Health and the Commonwealth Fund have being conducting polls in the Commonwealth now for a good length of time. In their recent poll 20% of Canadians said that on the whole the system works pretty well and that only minor changes are needed to make it better and 56% said that there are some good things in our health care system, but fundamental changes are needed to make it work better. This is the worrisome one: 23% of the Canadian public said “Our health care system has so much wrong with it that we must completely rebuild it”. Let us compare that with 10 years ago. Ten years ago the exact same question was asked. At that time 56% said minor changes, 37% said major changes, and only 5% said it needed a complete rebuild. Are they biased? It is the Harvard School of Business. They are American.
What did a recent Angus Reid, CTV, Medical Post , Chatelaine poll say? Seventy-three per cent of Canadians said that the health care system in our country has worsened over the last five years. Most interesting was that they figured out the cause: 55% said the government was at fault.
One may say that the Angus Reid poll was biased and asked very skewed questions. However, another poll was just done by Pollaro. This was done for the Coalition of National Voluntary Organizations and Merck Frosst Canada. The first question asked: Is medicare fine? Four per cent of Canadians said it was fine. The second question asked: Does it need a minor tune-up? Thirty-seven per cent said it needed a minor tune-up. The third question asked: Does it need major repairs? Forty-five per cent of Canadians said that it needs major repairs. The last question asked: Does it need total rebuilding? Twelve per cent said yes.
If we propose a solution for Canada that has anything to do with innovation or looking at fresh thinking we are called an enemy of Canada. The public, however, is going to drive this debate. This will not be driven by politicians, by the medical profession or by the bureaucrats. The patient will come first.
The government's solution is to put conditions on health care funding.
The Bloc Quebecois says no to such conditions, as do Albertans and Reformers. It has nothing to do with the Constitution. This is an issue that affects those who use health care services. A change is needed in Canada.
I support the Bloc Quebecois motion and I hope the Liberals will as well.