Madam Speaker, I am also pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the debate on Bill C-71 and in particular to address the amendment proposed by the Bloc.
Let me begin by starting where the Reform Party left off. I take some umbrage with the last speaker's comment. What we are dealing with here is more than a mathematical equation. When we address health care needs, if we are at all serious about formulating good policy, we have to look at need. Surely the member from the Reform Party understands that a straight cap will not necessarily reflect the needs, particularly the acute needs in various regions of this country. It certainly would not reflect the third world conditions that we now see in northern and remote communities in all parts of the country.
We must go beyond looking at a straight per capita formula and start looking at questions of ensuring that our publicly administered health care system can be funded to the extent to which it is the dominant mould by which we provide health care in the country.
I would urge the members of the Reform Party to look very carefully at how the ratio between public and private spending is shifting. Under the present system and under the formula proposed by the Reform Party, we will soon see private control over our health care system dominate completely.
It would put at risk the fundamentals of our health care system, the very notion of a universally accessible health care system. Certainly if not in a direct way, in a most insidious way we would see the end of medicare, the end of the five principles under the Canada Health Act and the end of our system that is the envy of the world over, a single tier, universally accessible, publicly administered health care system.
Having made those introductory comments in response to Reform's proposition, let me say how important it is to have this opportunity to participate in the discussion on the 1999 budget particularly because it has been called the health care budget. It is important to have this debate because the government has denied us opportunities on every front to ensure that we hold the government accountable for its expenditures particularly when it comes to health care.
I want to say for the record that if it were not for this opportunity today, we would have little chance to scrutinize the government's expenditures in any area, particularly health care. The estimates process at the committee level has become a charade. There is very little opportunity at the committee level, because of the way the government controls the committee process, to ensure that we have ample time to scrutinize the expenditures of the government. That particularly applies in the area of health care. Based on the committee of which I am a member, given the dictates of the Liberal government and its hold over the committee system, we will be lucky to have four sessions, maybe eight hours of discussion on an incredibly large and costly part of our system.
I want to take every opportunity I can to speak on health care because of the arbitrary and autocratic way in which this government has operated. It has taken away so many opportunities for true participation by members of the House and for true democracy to prevail.
This government has tried to portray the 1999 budget as a health care budget. The question for all of us today is does it in its details actually accomplish that objective and meet that description? We have heard today and from Canadians everywhere that it does not. One could actually say that the government has presented us with another example of smoke and mirrors, another attempt at illusory politics, another way to disguise the real issues.
What the government has done in this budget when it comes to health care is that in five years time it will get us back to the level we enjoyed in 1993 when the government began its very massive cutback and offloading in health care. I do not need to repeat the statistics. Canadians are fully aware of them. They were as shocked as we were when we realized the full impact of this budget and what it actually meant in terms of federal support and federal responsibility for quality health care.
The best way I can put it is to recognize that when all is said and done, federal spending as a percentage of all health care spending amounts to 12%. Just think back. That is a long way from the notion of 50:50 cost sharing as was once the case. In actuality it truly happened; we used to have a 50:50 federal-provincial cost shared arrangement on health care. That is certainly a long way from the 25% goal that many experts in this field have recommended as the bare minimum for government.
Where are we at? We are at 12%. Where is private spending in this country? It has grown to 30% of all spending on health care. It does not take much calculating to figure out what that actually means and what kind of system we end up with. We end up with a two tier health care system, no ifs, ands or buts.
Some would say that we already have a two tier health care system. Absolutely. Why do we have a two tier health care system? Because the federal government dropped the ball, offloaded responsibility, cut back to the point where it has created a wide open climate for private investment to insert itself and encroach on a whole area once considered absolutely sacred as a public service. How does that show up in the lives of ordinary Canadians?
It shows up in Alberta where the provincial government continues to advance the notion of a private hospital. There has been no retreat from that despite public outcry. It shows up in Prince Edward Island in the form of the possibility of a hospital that will be run on one of the so-called public-private partnerships.
It shows up in the fact that privately funded MRIs, magnetic resonance imaging machinery, are springing up all over the country and are available on a two tier basis. People who have the money can get access. Those who do not, tough luck. It shows up in the form of private eye clinics springing up all over the country.