Mr. Speaker, it is a delight to have an opportunity to speak to Bill C-71, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in parliament on February 16, 1999. The reason it is a delight to have a chance to participate in this debate is to clarify some of the mythology surrounding the most recent budget.
I realize that politics has a lot to do with perception. Perception is a fancy word for mythology, or misleading I suspect.
I have had some interesting advice. Watching today is a very important individual, Ange Vautour, who is age 75. Today is his birthday. He is very interested in the outcome of today's deliberations. As well, my father who is in his mid-nineties, is watching today. He gave me all kinds of advice in terms of what to include in my comments on the budget. They are two very special individuals, and I suspect many other very special individuals are watching today's proceedings.
I have listened with interest to the debates to this point. The picture from the constituency level is that this was a health care budget. In other words, a lot of people said that the government took major steps to once again fund Canada's health care system. In a sense that is true, but only in a sense. When we look at the fine print of this budget, we notice that if we wait for not this year, not next year, not the year after, not the year after that, and not the following year, but the following year, the funding the provinces will get will be at the same level as it was way back in 1995.
This is a bit of magic, a bit of hocus-pocus. This is moving the little shell between hats when the government says it is reinstating a whole lot of money into health care, which is true, but after all is said and done, many years from now, we are still way back in the mid-1990s in terms of funding for health care. Let us admit today that we are still going to be seriously underfunded in terms of developing the health care system that Canadians wish.
There are two items that I remember my friends in the Liberal Party promised Canadians. They promised, and promised. They said, “If you elect Liberals, we are going to have a decent home care program across the country. If you elect Liberals, we are going to have a decent pharmacare program. As a matter of fact, we will have a national pharmacare program and we are going to wind it into our medicare system”.
I noticed that the budget was relatively mute on two items. The Liberals do not talk much about home care any more. They do not talk much about pharmacare. I suspect they can talk about it all they want if they do not put any money into it. Mr. Speaker, you might want to have home care, I might want to have home care and my friend from P.E.I. might want to have home care, but if there is no money for home care, what the heck do we do? This is an empty promise. This is a promise that means nothing.
It is fair to say we are not going to have a pharmacare program in this country for two reasons. The most obvious one is that the government puts no money into it. But there is another one and it is called NAFTA.
Under the provisions of NAFTA if we were actually going to impose a pharmacare program that made sense, we would make a lot of multinational pharmaceutical companies unhappy, particularly those based in the United States. They would say to us, “If you want to impose a national pharmacare program to give the people of Canada a break when it comes to buying their prescription drugs and so on, you have to compensate us for all the lost profits, billions and billions of dollars in lost profits”.
No government is going to be in a fiscal position to do that. The promise on home care and pharmacare in particular is mythology that has been perpetuated by this government. It continues to be perpetuated, but I do not think Canadians are being fooled in the least.
I have some very specific concerns I want to raise about this bill today. I want to talk for a moment about a fundamental problem that exists in this House, with this government, with this parliament and in this country.
I know all of us have encountered people saying they do not trust us, they trust politicians. They say we will let them down. They do not believe we will do the things we say we will do. They feel we do not listen to them. They feel alienated from the process.
There is good reason for having those feelings. The government has let people down. They are alienated. Do members think a person living in Kamloops or in Chicoutimi or in Moose Jaw or in Thunder Bay is involved in the decision making of this government at all?