Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to enter this debate today because it is an issue of great importance to Canadians. As we rush headlong into an unnecessary and unwarranted election, we are being asked to quickly push the bill through so the Liberals can look a little better than they do right now.
Why is there such a notable health care crisis in this country? Where did it come from? I have been sitting here thinking about the different things that have happened over the last number of years.
I remember way back in 1961, when most of the members in the House were not even born, my brand new wife and I left Saskatchewan, the home of medicare, and moved to Alberta. There was no public health care in Alberta. It was a privately operated system called MSI, Medical Services Incorporated. We paid a small premium every month and received excellent medical care.
Those were the days before the technological on-off switches for having babies, and soon after we were married, within the mandatory 10 months, our first daughter was born. Our new daughter and her mother received excellent care. I remember being very pleased with the care they received. Later on my wife had some complications and she had to go to Calgary where she received prompt, efficient and excellent care.
I now think back about 20 years, and it is amazing that it is already 20 years, when my dear wife again had a severe medical challenge. It is called cancer. She had a biopsy on Wednesday, a final diagnosis on Friday and surgery on the following Monday. It was amazing, just like that; quick, quick, quick. It worked. That was in 1980.
Now I am told that people with the same kind of medical emergency are on waiting lists for up to four months for the same operation. People with cancer cannot wait. That is deplorable.
I spoke to a young man in my riding not very long ago. Relative to my age he is young but I guess he is old to some of the youngsters in the group here. He has a medical challenge which requires some diagnostics. While he is waiting anxiously, and I must emphasize the word anxiously, the hospital is telling him that he can get in some time near the end of October. It was a couple of weeks ago when I was speaking with him.
There is a crisis in health care. Where did it come from? With all this blowing that the Liberal government wants to do now, where did the crisis come from? I can tell the House where it came from.
I have in my hand here, and I will hold it so that it cannot be seen as a prop, the budget 2000 document that was tabled in the House by the Minister of Finance. It just so happens that in this document the Liberals are bragging about improving the quality of life of Canadians and their children.
I look at this document and I see the amount of cash transfers for health from the federal government to the provinces. In 1993 it was $18.8 billion. In 1994 it was $18.7 billion. I will not keep reading the years but the amounts are $18.8 billion, $18.7 billion, $18.5 billion and $14.7 billion. These figures are right in the minister's own document.
The Liberal government administered cuts to health care and we are surprised that there is a health care crisis. The Liberal government took the money away and now it is giving some of it back and it wants all of us to cheer. It is like the guy who robs me of my wallet and asks me to thank him because he gives me money for bus fare home. It is absurd.
The Liberal government has literally cut billions of dollars out of the health care budget for the provinces. It is administered by the provinces. Now it is gingerly giving some of it back and it wants a bunch of praise because we expect this unanticipated election this fall.
By the way, just to digress a little, if the election is this fall it will have been called even earlier than the early call in 1997, just a little over three and a half years into the mandate. I do not know whether members are aware of it, but if there is an election every three and a half years instead of every four years, it increases the cost of the elections by over 12%. Why would we not use that money for health care instead of having needless elections? The only purpose of the election is that the Liberals want to get re-elected.
As another aside, I cannot help but mention that this week our party started running some ads. How did we finance them? I and a whole bunch of Canadian Alliance members across the country have donated money to the party in order to run the ads.
I noticed also this week the Liberal Party has started running ads. Who has paid for them? The same guys. We have paid for them because they are tax funded ads with the Government of Canada name on them.
The government is talking about all this wonderful money that it is putting back into health care. I have to be kind, so I will simply say gently that it is a myth. The Liberals have taken so much out and now they are gingerly putting some of it back and they want everyone to cheer and vote for them again. I am offended by that.
As far as I am concerned those ads are inaccurate. They do not communicate truthfully to Canadians what has actually happened. As far as I am concerned they are nothing but blatant election advertising at taxpayers' expense prior to the writ being dropped. I am very offended by that and so should every Canadian be offended by that, because it is so wrong to do that.
I mentioned the numbers. Over the years the government decreased the numbers and then it started adding to them. The Secretary of State for International Financial Institutions, who gave the speech on behalf of the government, talked about the $11.5 billion which the government put back in. Again that is messaging. It is really gross messaging in terms of shading the truth.
If the government says it is putting in $11.5 billion, almost all Canadians assume, because we deal with annual budgets, that it is $11.5 billion per year. Well, it ain't, if I can use that English inaccuracy to make a point. It just ain't true. The fact is $11.5 billion was projected. Most of it has not been paid yet. It was projected over the next five years, so it is just a little over $2.5 billion a year.
That is the same as a policeman who stops me for speeding and asks how fast I was going. I could say I was going 400. The purpose of my trip was to go 400 kilometres. If I said that I was going 400 he would give me a whopper of a ticket but actually I was going 100, planning on doing that for four hours and doing my 400 kilometre trip. The same thing is true here. We are talking about rates of expenditure of public money for health care. It is so much per year.
The government is doing the same thing again in Bill C-45, which proposes to put all this extra money into health care. It did it again by saying it is spending $21.1 billion on health. What a wonderful number. What years are we talking about? It starts on April 1, 2001. The Liberals are going to win an election on it, but they are not even talking about putting any money into health care. They are in other parts of the bill. In the part about the $21.1 billion it begins April 1, 2001. The next payment is April 1, 2002, the next April 1, 2003 and then it goes to 2004 and to 2005.
From the years 2001 to 2005, the Liberals are going to put in a total of $11.2 billion, around $2 billion to $2.5 billion a year on average. It is way in the future but they are advertising it on TV as if the money is here now. They are not stating that it is way in the future. They want Canadians simply to be duped into believing that they are doing wonderful things for health care so they will vote for them again because they want power. I find that offensive and we should put an end to it. It is very disturbing to me that this has occurred.
I am not talking too much about the health care system per se because I am primarily a finance critic. However, I would like to talk a bit about the history of the Liberal government. I did a little math. I love math. I get out my calculator and play with numbers for recreation. Other people bore themselves to death by doing things like golfing. I like solving little math problems.
I have already described how since 1993 the funding for health care went down and then went up again. After 2005 it actually will be higher than it was in 1993. However, after 2001, with the total amount of money that will be put into health care, it will still be less than the amount that was being transferred in 1993. It went down so low that this bill will not even bring it up to the 1993 levels.
What I did was take the numbers from 1993 all the way to the projections for 2005, a total of 12 years. I will not read the numbers, but members can check with me later if they want them. I did a calculation to find out how much the amount had increased. By the year 2005 the government will actually be putting in more than in 1993, 12 years earlier.
That works out to an increase of 11.7% over 12 years. That is an average increase, compounded annually, of 0.9%, less than 1% per year. Our population has grown bigger than that. We are falling behind per person. We are putting less and less into health care per capita and the government wants to applaud itself. I am sure that anyone who knows the facts will not applaud. The government needs to applaud itself because that is the only applause it will get, I am sure.
I cannot help but think about the government's concern for children. It loves to talk about children but it is missing the most important thing. I am very grateful that when our children were young we could afford, with sacrifices, to live on one income. In our family it happened to be that I was chosen to earn the income and my wife was a full time mom. Now two of our children who are married have children. We have four wonderful grandchildren. I am very grateful that they each have a full time mom. I assure members that is not without sacrifice.
The term Liberal government is an oxymoron. Liberal comes from the same root word as liberation and freedom. Instead, the Liberals tax us to death and control our lives. It is shameful. The Liberal government thinks that it does best by taxing people so heavily that both parents have to work, then it wants to be kind and give money back for social services to look after children who really do not have an effective home to live in.
Would it not be better if we so arranged our fiscal affairs that families would be taxed at a level where they could actually afford to make that choice? The operative word is choice. We know that easily two-thirds of families, when given a free choice, would choose to spend time at home with their young children. That is not a choice under the contradictory term of Liberal government. That choice is taken away.
I have to emphasize again that under the programs of the Canadian Alliance, not only would we fund health care adequately, working together with the provinces in harmony, giving them the authority to operate the health care system efficiently, but we would also reduce taxes for families so that those choices would be real and viable.
I could go on and on but I choose not to because I know we are eager to hear what my colleague has to say in terms of the health care system. He will talk more about that part of it.
I simply want to conclude by emphasizing that what the Liberals say and what they do are two different stories. The ads on television this week and what is actually happening is not the same story. One is designed to win the next election. What they are actually doing, by their policies and actual practices, is putting health care at serious risk in this country. It is time to replace these Liberals and put into power a government that thinks clearly about these things, communicates clearly with the Canadian people and will fix the problem.