Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that. You might notice that I am being surrounded by some of the most cerebral people in the House. It is nice to be accompanied by so many members from all sides of the House. It very seldom happens in this place.
There are a couple of things I want to make clear from the outset. Our critic in this area, who should have spoken tonight, the member for Saint John, had to go back to her constituency. I am pleased to be speaking in her place.
If we look back at people who have taken on causes in the House from time to time, I do not think any member of the House has been more dedicated to a particular cause than the member for Saint John. She has done an extremely good job in working with the government, sometimes criticizing the government but certainly working with the minister on this file.
If the veterans are looking at one particular minister in the past that really did it all for them it would be George Hees. We are hoping that the new minister from Newfoundland will evolve into that type of minister in terms of historical recognition of someone that really did something for veterans. Obviously there is more to do.
I want to read the motion to Canadians so they will have an idea of what we are talking about. The member for Edmonton East, and we applaud him for it, moved this motion:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should institute national standards for veterans health care with maintenance and special needs provisions, and have these standards agreed upon by all provinces before dissolving responsibilities to any province for any portion of care.
The Bloc member was somewhat agitated and a bit emotional on the topic. Maybe the members from Quebec would agree with me in what I am about to say. It is probably the only point we will agree on tonight. The veterans hospital in Montreal is a hospital I am familiar with because that little stretch on Ste. Anne de Bellevue is the shortest piece of road between routes 20 and 40. When I do from time to time drive back to New Brunswick I take that little street by the hospital we are speaking about, the one that led to this discussion. It is the last veterans hospital in Canada that will be taken away and devolved into provincial jurisdiction. In other words, the federal government will move that hospital over to the province of Quebec to look after the veterans. It is telling us that is just a proposal. No negotiations are presently under way but that is obviously what it is looking at. I believe it is the last hospital in Canada so designated.
This is part of the bigger picture which I think every member of the House has expressed in terms of the federal government's lack of funding in health care. We are seeing that from one end of Canada to the other in the have provinces and have not provinces. We are finding that every province has to scramble to find a way to fund health care because of the denial and cutbacks in funding from Ottawa.
When we are talking about the five principles of health care in the country, those principles have been violated time and time again. We do not have a so-called universal system of health care. Health care delivery, primary care delivery, varies from province to province. Some provinces can afford to do more. Some provinces cannot afford to do more. Some provinces have continually done less year after year after year.
Why is this? It is because of the cutbacks by the federal government. We might argue about what the numbers are, but most of us, regardless of what side of the House we sit on, are arguing in the $10 billion to $12 billion range. That is a lot of change, but it is money that the provinces cannot come up with.
When the model for universal health care or medicare in Canada was invented back a number of years ago and we entered into agreements with the provinces, the federal government was coming in for a bigger share of the cost of delivering those services.
We have to recognize that constitutionally the delivery of primary care is a provincial jurisdiction. Maybe what we are talking about, to have this matter finally solved, is some kind of constitutional arrangement that would allow people who actually make the rules to somehow have access to the tax dollars to do that. Presently the federal government has the money to do it but it is trying to enforce the rules on the provinces without giving them the tax dollars to actually do it. We have to sit down and intelligently talk about it at some point.
Just before coming to the House I was in a meeting. Believe it or not the topic of discussion was the delivery of health care services to seniors, our aging population. As hon. members know, that is the next crisis that will hit health care and Canadian society as our aging population continues to grow.
It is heartwarming that one of the individuals to whom I spoke just a few short minutes was a gentleman named Larry F. Gray. He is the service officer for the Royal Canadian Legion. He is a retired gentleman and donates a good deal of his time to helping veterans, older citizens, cope with the realities of the present day. I should have him standing beside me because he could contribute to this debate like none of us could.
One of the statistics he gave me indicated that there are approximately 1,630 legion branches in Canada with 450,000 legion members. If we were creative and we wanted to do something, imagine what we could do if we could mobilize on a community basis those people back home. I think we have to find some way of reinventing the wheel. I know tax dollars will do part of it but they cannot do all of it.
I know the federal minister raised this trial balloon a few short weeks ago. It was systematically shot down by just about every province in terms of delivering community care back in the communities, back in the provinces. We were talking about home care and community care. It was routinely shot down by the premiers. It goes back to my earlier argument. They are saying “Listen, we cannot afford to deliver the programs that we have out there presently. Let us not come up with something else”.
We have to sit down as a nation at the table and realize our limitations. What can we do to solve the problem? Let us not continue to argue about it. Let us not continue to talk about the past. We have to look at the future for ways of realistically dealing with the health care crisis in Canada.
The member's motion before us is laudable. It should be supported by every member in the House. At the end of the argument he is not just talking about veterans, although that is the primary concern here this evening. It is about all Canadians. He is really saying in this motion that we should support health care to a level where all Canadians can expect the best health care in the world. We are capable of doing that as a nation.
We are getting into education. We are getting into a provincial jurisdiction again. Let us realize as parliamentarians that the two biggest issues are education and health care. They go hand in hand. Let us educate our young people so they have meaningful jobs and the kinds of income that will sustain our tax system and support the programs we are talking about in the House such as the best health care system in the world. We can do it. I applaud the member. We are in a position to support his motion.