Mr. Speaker, I want to say a few words on the bill before the House today, the bill that is putting more money back into health care. I want to state the obvious, which is that even with the additional money, we will still not be back to the levels we would have been at if the government had not touched the bill in the first place back in 1995 in the budget of the Minister of Finance.
When the history of this period is written, we will find that there has been no government that has taken as much money out of social programs, particularly health care, as the conservative government across the way. I say conservative because it is more conservative than the Conservative government was when it comes to restricting programs for people.
Now of course we have an election campaign that is about to be announced. The Prime Minister will drop the writ this weekend for November 27. One wonders what that campaign is all about.
I think this campaign is more about the Prime Minister's fear of the Minister of Finance than his fear of the opposition parties. He is afraid of the Minister of Finance and afraid of a rebellion on the backbenches of the Liberal Party.
Here is a government whose cabinet has recommended no election this fall. Here is a government whose caucus recommends no election this fall. Here is a government whose pollster has recommended no election this fall. Here is a government that knows the Canadian people do not want to waste $100 million to $200 million on an election campaign this fall. Here is a government that is only three years and a few months into its mandate.
Here is a government that does not want a campaign, but there is a Prime Minister who wants a campaign because he is afraid of the Minister of Finance and a rebellion in the backbenches of the Liberal Party. That is what politics has been reduced to.
I wanted to say those words in the debate today because the Prime Minister has been trying to fast track absolutely everything so that he can drop the writ come Sunday of this particular week.
Some of my friends in the Liberal Party—and there is one behind the curtain now—are quite embarrassed by the Prime Minister in terms of how he is trying to engineer an election for his own purposes because of his fear of the Minister of Finance.
The Prime Minister of course is bringing in the premier of Newfoundland to be a minister in the government. The premier of Newfoundland is not a member of parliament and, God help us, not even a member of the other place, the Senate.
The Prime Minister is setting a really dangerous precedent. He did this with the minister for trade and the minister for intergovernmental affairs a few years ago. He put them in the cabinet and called a byelection to get them elected. They were not even members of parliament but were given cabinet positions. The same thing has happened with the premier of Newfoundland. He has been put in cabinet and is not a member of parliament.
The last time I remember that happening before this Prime Minister was back in the days when, I believe, the leader of the today's Conservative Party brought in a fellow named René de Cotret and put him in the cabinet. He later ran in Ottawa Centre. I think it also happened when former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau appointed Pierre Juneau way back in the 1970s or early 1980s.
Here we have a Prime Minister in the modern age taking someone who is not elected. He has done it three times. He is setting a very dangerous precedent by putting three people in cabinet with no election, without going to the people. I do not think that should be done. If someone wants to serve in the cabinet, he or she should be elected to the Parliament of Canada. The Prime Minister has not done that.
We should have a very healthy debate about all these issues. They are all very important. I believe we should have set election dates. We should have elections every four years unless the government falls on a confidence vote. We should have a set parliamentary timetable with a set time for a throne speech, a budget and a beginning and an end to a session so that the Prime Minister cannot manipulate the timetable for his own partisan political differences.
Some of the people most frustrated with this are the Liberal backbenchers themselves. When they walk out of the House they tell me how frustrated they are with a Prime Minister who runs a one man show with the support of one or two ministers and a few bureaucrats in his office, including one of my friends who I see across the House here today.
The system has to change. We need a government and a parliament that listens to the people of Canada. If we had that we would not have had the big cutbacks in health care in 1995 to begin with.
There are Liberals hanging their heads in shame. Their government has cut absolutely billions of dollars out of health care. They were a bunch of nervous nellies who were afraid of a Leader of the Opposition at that time who was advocating massive cutbacks in health care and in social programs. The Liberals cut back more than any other government in the history of Canada. They should be very embarrassed by their government's position.
Someone across the way said that it would be a dinosaur who would advocate more money for health care. I do not know where some of those Liberals have been but they should talk to the ordinary people in this country. Canadians want an investment into programs for people. They want the social deficit eliminated. They want the opportunity to have health care regardless of their incomes. Those are the things Canadians want but the government is cutting back on them.
Health care came into this country through a courageous fight many years ago waged by people in Saskatchewan. It began back in the 1940s with hospitalization and in the 1960s with health care. It was people like Tommy Douglas who brought health care into the country.
If we look at the Canadian population we will find that there is no program as popular in Canada as health care, yet we have Liberals across the way laughing about it, saying that it is an old-fashioned thing, that it is out of touch, a thing of the dinosaurs. I wish they would get up in the House and say that publicly rather than just heckling.
Last week I was talking with a number of people in the inner city of Regina who were very concerned about losing health care. They were very concerned about the government's massive cutbacks in all social programs. They were concerned about the government putting all the money on paying down the national debt while forgetting to invest in people and paying off the social deficit.
Where are the great progressive Liberals, those great left wing Liberals who used to stand in the House and advocate programs for people, advocate the redistribution of income and wealth in the country, advocate a vision of a country that is based on sharing, co-operation and greater equality? Now they seem to be Alliance people in a hurry. There is not much difference between the two parties in terms of their tax programs, paying down the national debt and forgetting about the fact that we need money and programs for the people.
There will be a choice in the election that is coming up. There will be a couple of different visions in the election. There are two parties, the Alliance and the Liberals, that share a very similar vision as to how they want to organize the economy. There is an argument as to whether or not they should put more money into the debt and deficit or put more money into helping wealthy people pay down their taxes.
The Alliance Party has a 17% flat tax that it is advocating in its second term, a flat tax that would be a big cutback for millionaires in the country. How much different is the Minister of Finance? A lot of his tax breaks have put a lot more money into the pockets of wealthy people in Canada as well.
I want to point out to the Canadian people that the Liberal Party across the way will leave a legacy of being the most conservative government in our post-war history: more conservative than the government of John Diefenbaker, more conservative than the government of Brian Mulroney and certainly more conservative than the governments of Pierre Trudeau and Lester Pearson.