Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to take part in today's debate on Bill C-45.
I am not sure how to begin. We are obviously not going to deny the health care system more money because it needs it. There is no question that this is a cynical move on the part of the government on the eve of an election. That is really what drove the government to the bargaining table with the provinces, so it came up with a deathbed reprieve and put money into health care, money which it took out of the system over the last seven years after it came into office in 1993.
We heard on many occasions this morning about the dollars that the government has taken out. If we look at this, it has taken $24 billion out of the system. It projected taking out another $9 billion but was forced to back down on that. If the Liberals had their way, they would have taken at least $35 billion out of the system.
The money they are putting back into the system will bring us back to 1994 levels once the full value of the package kicks in. However, we are going to be waiting a number of years before we get there. Actually, by the year 2004, we will be back to the levels of spending of 10 years ago. It does not make sense but that has been the government's cynical approach to governing over the last number of years.
Now, on the eve of an election, the Liberals are suddenly wanting to rush this bill through the House. They are attempting to marginalize this place because the agreement was struck between the Prime Minister and the provinces. The House of Commons and parliament were not consulted on the best way to approach this. Now we are stuck again with a deathbed reprieve. That is what they are asking for.
This may be somewhat cynical but it will be 18 months before the payments actually kick in. It is not going to immediately repair the damage that they have inflicted on the system in the last seven years. The first amount of money comes in 18 months. It will not affect the lineups at the emergency wards during flu season. In fact, that might be one of the reasons the government members want to go to the polls early. They do not want to go through another winter of lineups at the emergency ward.
It is not going to stop the trips or the busing of Canadian citizens to the United States to receive cancer treatments. In my home province of New Brunswick we are taking cancer patients down to Bangor, Maine, for treatment because our system has been denied funding for the last seven years. We cannot afford to treat our own patients, so at a higher price per patient we are now shipping them to the United States. Does that make sense? Of course it does not, because basically they do not have a plan. They do not have a vision. They are devoid of ideas. “No ideas, no votes” should be the slogan in the next election.
The premier of New Brunswick put it best. Our share as a small province is about the same as that of Nova Scotia, I might add. It would be in the order of $16 million once the money kicks in. That would keep the system in New Brunswick running for all of 12 days once it gets its full share of the money. There are 365 days in a year so there is a big shortfall.
The health minister in New Brunswick expressed it another way. The moneys that would come to the province of New Brunswick, if it wanted to use them on a day to day basis would keep the system running 12 days. That is another way of putting it. The health minister, Mr. Furlong, said that money would pay off existing health corporation debt, debt that has been racked up over the years simply because of the money shortage and because of the lack of commitment by the federal government to fund health care. That responsibility rests at the doorstep of the Prime Minister.
In the last election, with the same kind of deathbed reprieve, he asked for forgiveness for taking a wrecking ball to health care. On the eve of the election he pumped a few billion dollars back into it to resurrect his political fortunes. Fortunately for the Prime Minister it worked. Unfortunately for the Canadian people it worked, because now we are victims of the same cynical process.
We only have to go back to the election of 1993 and the election of 1997. Let us remember red book one and red book two. I suppose we could call them fairy tale one and fairy tale two. I could quote from either one of the documents to make my point. In both those documents the present government made a commitment to health care. In two successive elections it reneged on that promise, not to mention its promise on the GST. We will forget about that one because that is another argument.
The revenues from the GST are making the government look pretty good today in terms of balancing the books and eliminating the deficit. Automatically we could extract $30 billion from the equation today as we stand in this place because of the revenues coming in from that hated tax, the tax the government was to axe when it got into office. It is seven years and waiting and we still have it.
If we take a look at the OECD report in terms of world economy and how Canada is faring, it credits the GST and the free trade agreement as the engines of the Canadian economy, the structural changes that we made along with deregulation and privatization to get the Canadian economy rolling. What do the Liberals do? They pick on the most vulnerable in society: the sick, the poor and the elderly. I could add the unemployed. They use the same technique of heavy handedness on the most vulnerable of all workers, our seasonal workers.
It was only a fight that we waged in this little corner of the House of Commons that forced them to back down. They took a position they could not sustain, especially on the eve of an election.
If this were six months after an election they would roll in for another three years or so. The plan of the Liberals is that they do not go to the people every four or five years. They go in three and a half years. They do not wait for the constitutional period a government is allowed. They go because of political expediency. They go because they are high in the polls. They are not going because their agenda has been filled or their red book promises have been fulfilled. They forget about red book one and red book two. They go on the trash heap of all trash heaps in terms of political promises.
This is like a crazy glue, Scotch tape approach to government. We can see them pasting together a platform that might work with the aid of crazy glue and Scotch tape. I hate to use the words Scotch tape in reference to the Liberals. I guess it is derogatory used in that sense. Their approach to government is basically ad hoc. They make it up as they go along, with no plan for the future.
There is no plan in the health bill. The plan is to get re-elected to impose the same kinds of draconian cuts. There are no guarantees in the bill that they will not do it six months after an election. How did they get away with it? They forced the provinces into a room and said either take the money or there is no money. This was the deal or no deal.
The Prime Minister basically asked how they would go back home and deny their people that money. That is old fashioned blackmail. That is what the government is used to. It got away with it for seven years. This will be the third election in seven years, with no other reason than political expediency for calling an election. The government's commitments to the Canadian people have yet to be filled.
They went back to trash heap and resurrected red book two from 1997. Where are the commitments to health care in terms of delivery of a home care program and a pharmaceutical program? They are lost somewhere out there in great Liberal propaganda land, nowhere to be seen. The government is hoping that Canadians will forget about it, but we will not forget about it. We will remind them exactly what the government has done or in this case not done on the health care file.
There is nothing there to be proud of. The premiers wrapped their arms around this in Ottawa at 24 Sussex. It is pretty hard to deny the Prime Minister on his turf. He would probably kick them out on the street if they did. The premiers went home and sobered up. I am saying that in a sincere sense. After having a chance to go through the document, every one of them said the document came up short of the mark. The Canadian Medical Association said it was $17 billion short of the mark. The government will continue on the same track if it is given the mandate. That should be a sobering thought for Canadians.
There is an old expression that there is nothing like a lynching in the morning to sober the mind. I am saying that is what the government will get because it is looking at a huge ocean of support, a mile wide, but unfortunately for it only about an inch deep. It will evaporate on the first day of the campaign. It will be a downhill trail for the government.
A few years ago David Peterson in Ontario suddenly called an election for no reason other than the fact that he was popular in the polls. The same thing will happen this time.
This is how the preamble should read to Bill C-45, because we are talking about fairy tales one and two. In other words, red book one is fairy tales edition one and red book two is fairy tales edition two. We are anxiously awaiting fairy tales three or a rerun of one or two. The preamble to red book three, if there is one, should go something like this: Once upon a time, long ago in a land far away, the benevolent king bestowed upon his et cetera.
It is a fairy tale in the making. It is not real. I guess the Liberal philosophy is, if it worked once we will do it again, if it worked twice we will do it again, but three times and the jig is up. The Liberals have no credibility on that file.
Let us talk about balancing the books. I see, the Secretary of State for International Financial Institutions here. He loves to get up, button his suit and boast about their financial record, conveniently forgetting that he stood on this side of the House and raged against the GST.
In a moment of weakness not too many months ago that same minister admitted we could not eliminate the GST and that some of their financial success was due to revenues generated by that instrument. I see the minister clapping. I appreciate that. It has taken him seven years to publicly acknowledge that in the House of Commons. I welcome questions from the minister as well.
Nurses have taken an awful pounding from the government, as have doctors. The government forgets about the commitment of Canadians to preserving health care: the nurses and doctors, the people cleaning hospitals, the instrument technicians and the people who work in cafeterias. Every one of them, from the top to the bottom, has been a victim of the government.
It will happen again. In addition to the five principles of the health care act, universality, portability, accessibility, et cetera, we are suggesting that we need the sixth principle of secure, defendable, dependable funding so that governments have a chance to plan.
A government cannot give everything to everybody all the time, but most Canadians deserve a road map, a plan of where the government is going, which would allow hospital corporations and provinces to budget and lay out plans that would be workable in a five to ten year period. We know what spending costs are doing in the health care field. Statistically we can forecast what the cost will be down the road in a number of years.
I am reading from a document of June 2000 that talks about the cost drivers. It predicts that annual provincial health care costs will rise to at least $85 billion in 10 years from the $54 billion of today. That is just on the health care side provincially. It also says that the long range outlook is even more stark. Provincial health care costs could rise by 247% in the next quarter century to $186 billion from today's $54 billion. Those are real numbers.
The government must acknowledge the fact that we are getting a deal on health care. We have a system that includes everyone. Every one of us is entitled to the publicly funded health care system.
In the United States the system is driven by litigation and private corporations, insurance companies being one of them, not to mention medical corporations or HBOs. Some 40% of all Americans are left out of their health care system because it is not publicly funded. A majority of the other 60% is getting services below a standard that would be acceptable, simply because it is driven by the private sector.
We do not want to see that type of system in Canada. The fact is that the Americans, as a percentage of GDP, pay more for a system that is completely broken than we pay in Canada. In GDP terms in the U.S. it is just slightly under 15%. In Canada we are slightly under 10%, more in the order of 9%.
It is a deal but it does not come without a cost. We acknowledge that, but we must have a commitment from the Government of Canada stating that, yes, it will have sustained funding and it will make sure the system works, and no, it will not subject people to the next round of budget cuts as has been done in the past.
There is nothing in this package, Bill C-45, that gives us any sense of relief or satisfaction that the Government of Canada has learned its lesson and that stable funding will be there. At the whim of the Prime Minister or the Minister of Finance acting on behalf of the Prime Minister and cabinet, the government could actually come in six weeks after the election and take a scalpel to health care again.
The principle we are standing by is the sixth one, sustained dependable funding, and adding it to the health care package or the five principles of health care so that there is a road map, a business plan. No one can run a business without a plan except the Government of Canada.
As I said originally in this debate, there are no ideas. The government is devoid of all ideas. There is no plan for the future. I think the Liberals' campaign slogan in this election should be “No ideas, no votes”. I would accept that.