The member for Saint John is another member for whom I have immense respect, but I say to the members opposite that this is not just about sending money to the provinces.
In my community, in downtown Toronto, a young man died in an ambulance because he could not get admittance to a hospital.
When my constituents listen to us talk, I think most of them would be lost in all of these numbers: billions here, hundreds of millions there.
In no way, shape or form am I trying to put down my constituents or members, but I think we are going at this issue the wrong way. The member for Durham talked about this the other day. We should be talking about re-engineering the health care system. We should be going back to Emmett Hall's report to give our whole system a health check. I have not heard one speech in the House today which mentioned health prevention. How much emphasis do we put on health prevention in the debate today?
I will give a couple of specific examples. A year and a half ago, in our sport committee where we were looking at the importance of having a physically active nation, we were told that men and women should spend at least half an hour a day doing some physical exercise. The best doctors in our country appeared before us. Those surgeons had studies that were ratified not only by our best, but by the best in the world, which stated that if we could increase Canadians' commitment to physical activity an additional 10% we could put downward pressure on health care costs within 18 months to the tune of $5 billion annually.
As a government we have a responsibility to mobilize the people of the nation to become more responsible toward themselves and to become more physically active. Again I will go back to my colleague from Durham. This is not just about giving Premier Harris or Premier Tobin blank cheques. It is not about that.
I would not give anybody a blank cheque in this area because it would delay the process of re-engineering the system. We need to go back to Emmett Hall's report, take some of those principles and reapply them.
What about the whole realm of alternative medicine? What about mental health? What about the environment?
When will we talk not only about sending cheques here or sending billions there? When will we have a debate on the creative things we can do as members of parliament, as the House of Commons of Canada, which we can bring to the ministers of health and the premiers of the provinces? We all have a part to play. I do not think we are talking about it enough in the House. All we want to talk about is sending cheques here and there. Is that what the House of Commons has become, a cheque writing machine?
We have many intelligent men and women in the House and we should be using our brains to put forward creative ideas. Where are the creative ideas on fixing the health care system? To quote my colleague from Durham, we should be re-engineering the system. Is there anyone who disagrees that we have to re-engineer the system?
We have heard the notion of Premier Klein wanting to privatize the system. Let me tell my colleague from Cape Breton that with all of the eye surgery that was done in the province of Alberta, all the analyses show that private clinics cost more. One of the things that makes this country great is the fact that everybody has access to the health care system. That is one of our trademarks as a nation.
The notion that we would create an environment where premiers would be allowed to experiment with private health care boggles my mind. NDP members would give blank cheques to Premier Harris and let—