Debates of March 2nd, 2000

Supply

[Yvan Loubier, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thirty-one billion.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Thirty-one billion dollars yearly. It is our money, after all. This is where we realize that the money we send to Ottawa does not serve our best interests. Because, if we kept this $31 billion at the national assembly—and this is one aspect of sovereignty, as we know, sovereignty being defined as the ability to keep our taxes and to decide our own foreign policy and to have one government—not all of it, but a very large part of it would be established as transfer payments.

On the subject of radiation oncology, it is important, because it is related to cancer. In the case of radiation oncology—I would ask the member for Québec not to leave; I am not done—the need increases dramatically, particularly in the case of people over 50.

If I were to ask in the House which of my colleagues were baby boomers, there would be a lot of people casting shadows. There are a lot of baby boomers, that is people between the ages of 46 and 66. The hon. member here is one, and our colleague could manage it if we gave him a chance. What I am saying is that new cases of cancer increase annually by 3%. This is important and it is not surprising; the baby boomers are reaching an age where they will be looking for this type of service.

Radiation oncology requires millions and even billions of dollars in investment.

I want to say as an aside that I will be visiting all the hospitals in Montreal during the week's break we are about to take. I will meet some 20 organizations to make sure we are all in tune, those of us representing Quebecers in this House, and that we will come up with a very specific set of claims. I will propose to my caucus a plan for a tour in April or May.

Cardiology is not a simple matter either. People's needs increase after the age of 50. There are more bypasses among older people. I can mention some eloquent figures: over the past 10 years, there has been a 3.6% annual increase in heart surgery—this is very important, and we all know people who are concerned by this—there has been a 260% increase in balloon angioplasty.

I take this opportunity to salute our colleague, the Bloc Quebecois House leader, and wish him a speedy recovery. We know that he is listening to us, and we miss him. He works very hard with us and he follows our proceedings from a distance. He also shares our indignation about this government, and I offer him, on behalf of this House, our best wishes for a full recovery.

On either side of humanity, the situation is not any less acceptable. In other specialities, a longer life expectancy and a higher number of seniors increase current needs and create new ones. There is a type of medicine—and I know this very technical aspect will be of great interest to my colleagues—that has been developed in recent years, in connection with orthopedics.

Orthopedics concerns those who have problems with their hips, articulations, etc. I know there are many members of this House who have problems articulating, but this is not what I am referring to. I am talking about those who have problems with their legs or their hips. In a society with an increasing number of seniors and older seniors, a medical specialty developed, for which training is necessary.

I will say it again. When there is a demand, as there is from the NDP—the Progressive Conservatives will, I think, support the motion, as will the Bloc Quebecois, and I hope the Liberals will wake up in time—when there is a demand that transfer payments be restored to their previous level, it is because large amounts of money are needed to keep the health care system running.

Let us consider what Mrs. Marois said. She said that the Martin budget offered $2.5 billion over four years—is this not ridiculous, and I hope the parliamentary secretary is paying attention—when, at the premiers' conference, Quebec alone said that it needed $1 billion a year. The provinces are being offered $2.5 billion over four years. Is this not a far cry from what the premiers said they needed? They have three reasons for demanding that transfer payments be restored: obviously, they need enough money to run the system. Pauline Marois reminded us that Quebec's share of this $2.5 billion would cover the cost of running the system for only three days a week.

Another reason they are demanding this money is because they have to buy new equipment. Gone are the days when it was possible to buy specialized medical equipment for a few thousand dollars.

Millions of dollars in investment are required. This is also necessary because of the new types of care being developed. There are new health-related problems that require funding.

I would like to express one wish in closing. I believe we can work together in this House, as we have in some other areas, shipbuilding for one. My colleague has shown us it is possible not to be partisan, whether we are Liberals, Conservative, Bloc Quebecois, Reform or NDP. I believe that the government is going to find an extraordinary path of co-operation if it wishes to restore the transfer payments.

I am calling upon it to do so, in the name of our seniors, of those in hospital, the staff of the CLSCs, and all those who keep the system running but are running out of steam, and not because the Government of Quebec has not done its part. I have here a list of the investments by the Government of Quebec in the past few years. It has done a great deal, considering the means available to it.

The Government of Quebec can be counted on to do its utmost, and I am sure that the next budget by Minister Landry will focus on health. But we will not be able to face up to the challenges to our social and health systems if the federal government does not put its shoulder to the wheel.

This is not a partisan issue. The Bloc Quebecois, like all other parties here in this House, is going to work along with the government, but I beg it to loosen its purse strings and restore the transfer payments. Our fellow citizens are begging for this. It is the government's primary responsibility.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague opposite who I know has a great interest in health care. He sits on the health committee and contributes in a very positive and meaningful way most of the time. Unfortunately that is not so today.

Today he is talking a bit about all kinds of outrageous things in terms of what the federal government is doing. Quite frankly he is wrong. What we are doing is putting aside the kind of money that is necessary, certainly in the short term. More important, and this goes exactly to the heart of where the debate is going, we need to bring all provincial and territorial partners to the meeting in May with the federal health minister to start looking at a long term solution with long term objectives and at a focus in terms of where we want to go with our health care system. It is not always about throwing money at the problem. It is about how do things better, differently, and innovatively, given the technology and change in circumstances.

Will the hon. gentleman commit today to working closely with the federal government to ensure that Madam Marois and the people of Quebec who want to work closely will do the same in a positive and meaningful way? I remind him that not so long ago the Canadian Medical Association said that it was time for us to put aside petty politics. It is time for us to get beyond the partisanship. Health care is way too important for Canadians wherever they live in this great and fantastic country of ours.

Will the hon. member commit today to working hard and effectively to try to bring about the kind of long term solutions that are necessary for Quebecers and all other Canadians? After all, this is a Canadian issue. It goes to the very heart and soul of what it means to be a Canadian. It is an underlying value that we cherish, respect and want to improve on every chance we get. I know the hon. gentleman has no choice but to agree with everything I said.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot take any more questions, because I have to go to a committee meeting, but I will answer this one with particular care.

First, the hon. member who just spoke—he is a friend of mine, in spite of the fact that he sometimes gets upset at me—is the chair of the Standing Committee on Health. He is the one person in this House who is in the best position to convince the federal government to restore transfer payments. I would like him to stand in his place and give us, in the respect of his oath of office, if that oath means anything, a single instance where the Quebec Minister of Health did not co-operate with the Canadian government.

We know full well that the Quebec government used up all its health resources. The problem is that the money is in Ottawa, but the needs are in Quebec. This is the problem with the political system in which we live.

What is the hon. member's duty? As a member from Ontario, his duty is to put pressure on the federal government so that fiscal justice can be achieved and transfer payments restored.

If this is done in the next budget, all the members of the National Assembly will be grateful to the hon. member. Finance minister Bernard Landry will solemnly rise and say “We have $500 million extra for health, and it is coming from Ottawa. This is no handout, it is our taxes”. In fact, it is our taxes now but, unfortunately, we are not getting what we should be getting out of the $30 billion.

The Parti Quebecois government at the national assembly always co-operated when the situation warranted it. The issue is one of finance.

Of course, as I said and as the Quebec minister of health has said, this does not mean we cannot have a collective thinking process on how to structure health care. Some people question the regional management structure, while others wonder about certain types of care. The Quebec government is ready to participate in this debate.

I invite the hon. member to do the right thing—he should not leave, because I am not finished—and put pressure on the federal government to restore transfer payments for health. This is the way to go if this government wants to have some credibility with the provinces.

[Yvon Charbonneau, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to continue the discussion about health with the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve.

He was perhaps not here this morning, or perhaps he followed the debate from outside the House, as we all do occasionally—

[Jean-Guy Chrétien, Bloc, Frontenac—Mégantic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. The member, my former union president, was elected in 1997. He is well aware that he may not refer to the absence or presence of members in the House.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

That is quite correct, but the Chair was here earlier and in the Chair's opinion if a member can dish it out the member also has to be able to take it. It is not a one way street.

In the comments of the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve he very obliquely mentioned absence or presence and since both were made in a spirit of friendly debate I chose to ignore it. The member for Frontenac—Mégantic is quite correct. If I am going to apply the rules I would apply them impartially and that would have caused me to interrupt the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve.

[Yvon Charbonneau, Liberal, Anjou—Rivière-Des-Prairies, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for noting that if you had enforced the standing orders, you would have had to interrupt the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve earlier. Thank you for this clarification.

When the debate began the Minister of Health gave an overview of the amounts transferred to the provinces, to Quebec and the other provinces. We will not repeat all the figures he mentioned, which are public knowledge, but transfers are now up to an unprecedented high of $31 billion, if cash transfers and tax points are taken into account.

These transfers have increased by 25% in the last two years. These are substantial increases.

This morning the Minister of Health also offered to work at getting funding increased but said that the government would be working on putting new ideas together for renewing the system.

I wish to point out that this is pretty much how Mr. Landry, Quebec's minister of finance, sees things.

He said “Yes, we left $860 million sitting in a bank in Toronto. This is money transferred by the federal government. We left it in Toronto because we have to discuss in Quebec how we are going to use this money”.

Mrs. Marois, his colleague, said “I have no time to keep up with what is happening in finance. I am looking after health”. Mr. Landry said yesterday and today “This requires some thought”.

He is reiterating remarks by the Arpin commission report released last September. He is repeating thoughts of the former minister of health, Mr. Castonguay. He is reiterating the comments by Mr. Dutil, the head of the federation of general practitioners, who said it will take some thought and an attempt to find new ways to organize health care services rather than just having money thrown around here and there.

When the people of the Bloc say that Ottawa has the money and the provinces have the needs, I would like to point out that right now over $800 million intended to meet the needs of Quebec is sitting in Toronto.

What does the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve have to say to that?

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would caution our colleague from Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies against overly simplistic reasoning, which has a tendency to cloud the basic issues.

No one in Quebec, not its minister of finance, not the Bloc Quebecois members, not the Minister of Health, wishes to see another debate on the reorganization of health services, and the hon. member is well aware of this. As for what our colleague has said about the supposedly dormant funds, I wish to repeat what the Quebec minister of finance has already stated.

Quebec has made a considerable effort, through careful use of its surplus in an extremely difficult exercise of managing public funds. It kept these monies in trust as a contingency reserve fund, reminding us that next year's demand on the health system will be around 13.5% higher.

The lesson that needs to be taken from this is that the Government of Quebec has allocated a very considerable amount of resources to operating and maintaining the Quebec health system, and that the amounts it can fund independently are insufficient.

I am asking for some honesty from the hon. member. At the time of the budget speech, I met a former minister of this House, Brian Tobin, in the lobby. How is it that all provinces, regardless of political allegiance, even if they are represented by former federal Liberals, are demanding restoration of the transfer payments of the federal government? Is the hon. member not a bit rattled by seeing such a common front as is rarely seen in federal-provincial diplomacy?

I am appealing to the good faith and good will of the hon. member for Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, Charlotte, NB]

Mr. Speaker, there is no question about it that health care is in a crisis in this country. There are two reasons for it: one man and one party, that man being the Prime Minister of Canada and that party being the Liberal Party of Canada, aided and abetted by two others, the Minister of Finance who is the real health minister and the Minister of Health who is a secondary player in this equation.

The budget the Liberal Party, the Government of Canada, brought down the other day is basically an insult to the intelligence of every living, breathing Canadian. If we take a look what the government is putting back into health care, the numbers speak for themselves.

Every premier in the country, regardless of political stripe, has just simply told us that the money this government puts back into the system over the course of the next four years will run the system for three days. In the province that runs it the money put back into the system would amount to about $15 million this year. In a small province like New Brunswick with only slightly over 700,000 people that will run the system for three days. At $5 million a day, in three days that money is used up. That tells us how much the government has done.

What amazes me in this debate is that it has been the Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Finance who has been on his feet this morning more than anyone else. It is quite obvious that the finance minister is speaking on this issue. He is the one who is setting the tone for the government. He is the one who is calling the shots.

Unfortunately it is a leadership game being played out within the Liberal caucus. On the front benches of the Liberal Party that debate is being carried out between the health minister and the finance minister. That leadership race is being carried out at the expense of every single Canadian.

When they are on their feet it is always with patronizing platitudes. They do not talk about the real issues. They do not talk about the crisis. They try to comfort it in a sense. Basically what they said this morning was, “We are going to look for some long term common goals. We are going to talk about innovative, co-operative kinds of ideas that might lead us down the road in the right direction”.

We are tired of that. The Liberals have been in office for seven years. If they were serious about fixing Canada's health care system they would have started on the day they were elected back in 1993. But what did they do? By themselves they systematically and intentionally took $17 billion out of the system.

Despite it being the so-called health budget last year, at the end of four years we are going back to the same levels of funding for health care that we had in the early 1990s. Right now we are 10 years behind the times. Let us look at some of the statistics.

Mr. Speaker, I should also point out that I am splitting my time with the member for Shefford.

There are shortages of nurses, shortages of beds and shortages of doctors. There is a shortage of pathologists. That is important because pathology is at the root of diagnostic medicine. We have to know what is wrong with us before we can be treated.

This is factual, right out of the Library of Parliament. I issued a report on this. In 1993 there were 1,200 pathologists in this country and as I speak the number is down to 1,000. In the meantime the Canadian population has grown. It is an aging population. There are fewer people to diagnose what is wrong with us.

I believe it was yesterday that the president of the United States mentioned that over 50,000 Americans are dying because of the wrong diagnosis. The same thing is happening in Canada. Unfortunately we have not commissioned a study but that is just an indication of how bad the system is. There is only one party to blame. There is only one Prime Minister to blame. That is today's Prime Minister.

Talk as they may, the Liberals cannot get out from underneath the problem. They messed up. They are very reluctant to admit it and even more reluctant to do anything about it.

Here is what the premier of Ontario had to say about our present health minister. I am quoting Mike Harris out of the Ottawa Sun :

I met with Mr. Rock three years ago at the first ministers conference. He thought after three minutes of being health minister he was smarter than every other premier, every other minister of health, every other department of health, the OMA, the nurses' association, said Harris. But he has no ideas, no initiatives. He's given us nothing. Now it seems like he's convinced the Prime Minister and Paul Martin that he has a secret plan to miraculously deliver better health care for fewer dollars.

If he has a plan, would he please tell us what it is? Tell us what it is. The Liberals do not have a plan. They have no ideas. Day to day they stumble along making it up as they go along. That is exactly what the Canadian Medical Association has been saying for seven years.

We have to know where we are going. We have to know where the funding is and how much is going to be there at the end of the day. We cannot continue on these one and two year ad hoc programs in terms of funding and direction. That is exactly what the Liberals have been doing. Exactly what the Liberals have been doing is making it up as they go along with no long term plan.

Not too many weeks ago on the CBC news show The Magazine many of us saw the program on health care in Canada and cancer patients. The government is what we would call penny wise and pound foolish. Think of it. We are sending cancer patients, women with breast cancer, men with prostate cancer, people with other forms of cancer from Ontario to Cleveland in the United States of America for treatment. Where it becomes so bizarre it is almost hard to believe is that the treatment in the United States costs something in the order of $20,000 per patient. In Canada we could do the same treatment for $3,000 a patient. Why can we not do it? It is simply because of the draconian cutbacks that have been systematic and ongoing for seven years.

Penny wise and pound foolish; the Liberals are living examples of that. How they can stand on their hind legs in this place and support that budget is beyond my belief. This is a debate that has to happen, should happen and has to be ongoing. The Liberals have absolutely nothing to brag about in that budget, particularly on health care.

Getting into the finances of the budget, everything is three or four years down the road. The hidden message is “Vote for us and in four or five years you might get a tax break if we are still in office”.

That is not the way to run a country. It is not the way to run a health care system. There are 10 premiers that back me up on that statement. Every premier including the Liberal premier of Newfoundland says that our system is broken and is going to disappear unless the federal government does something about it.

The Liberals are in the driver's seat. It is their constitutional responsibility to fix health care. They set the rules. They have to work with the provinces to make sure that we sustain the best system in the world. That best system in the world has been eroding for the last seven years. It is the number one issue on the minds of every Canadian. Canadians know our system is disappearing before their very eyes. It is time we took the Liberals to task for it.

It starts and stops right at the feet of the Prime Minister. The buck stops there. He has to take his duties seriously. He has to give some direction to the finance minister and the health minister. They had better stop playing those childish leadership games.

In one or two weeks it will be pretty obvious to the national press when they sort this stuff out that it is playing out exactly as I say it and as we see it. It is one minister versus the other to become the leader of the Liberal Party, one at the expense of the other. At the end of the day, every one of us is paying the cost in terms of health care.

[Peter Mancini, NDP, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member from the Progressive Conservative Party for his comments.

He made reference to the many people in the province of Ontario who have had to go to Cleveland to seek some kind of medical care. I take it from his comments that he condemned that and he thinks that is a bad thing. I concur with him on that. I remind him that it was the NDP health minister who refused to allow that company to move into Ontario.

This is a non-partisan issue, an issue that goes to the heart of what Canadians believe the health care system should be. We have learned many things from different experiments in different provinces in the past.

Is the member as equally offended by the fact that in the province of Ontario not for profit organizations like the Victorian Order of Nurses have been driven out of the health care service system so that private companies can contract that service from the government? I would like him to comment on that practice in the province of Ontario.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, Charlotte, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the member's question. The point we are all trying to make in the House today is that the federal government is forcing the provinces to take extraordinary measures to deliver primary care. I believe the NDP health critic has spelled this out herself.

One of the difficulties is that the provinces deliver primary care but the federal government basically sets the rules and tells them how much money they are going to get to deliver the care. No premier is going to deny any citizen the care that he or she deserves. The federal government is forcing the provinces into a corner to do the very thing they do not want to do. Mike Harris and Premier Klein say they do not want to do this. The Liberals want to pretend they invented health care. When health care was invented in this country it was a 50:50 equation.

[An hon. member]

You had better come to Ontario.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, Charlotte, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I think I am touching a sensitive nerve because one man is going absolutely ballistic. He is going ballistic because he knows I am telling the truth. They are the ones who have taken away the funding. He is going ballistic.

[An hon. member]

You should be extricated from the House.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, Charlotte, NB]

Mr. Speaker, please identify that member by name.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The hon. member for New Brunswick Southwest has a way of bringing out the best in people.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment on some of the statements made by the member for New Brunswick Southwest. He talked about Mike Harris. Mike Harris made some choices. He said his priority was tax cuts.

Last year our government put $11.5 billion into health care and this year we are putting in another $2.5 billion. We hear about the investments the Ontario government has made in health care. They are one time severances. They are one time restructuring costs because the health care system has been gutted. The Harris government laid off 10,000 nurses and a couple of years later hired them back on. I guess that is why the Harris government has to increase the budget of the health care ministry in the province of Ontario.

I am staggered and I am sure the hon. member if he were candid would also be staggered by the way the health care system is used. There are people at different levels of the health care system and they are not really at the appropriate level. If we could move people from acute care hospital beds to a lower cost delivery system, it would save the health care system millions of dollars.

I would like to make one final point. Let it be clear that once the health minister has sat down with his colleagues, we are also prepared to come to the table with more cash.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, Charlotte, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it has taken the Liberals seven years to figure out that they have to work co-operatively with the provinces. This is an indication of how poor they are in terms of management of health care issues.

Who but a Liberal could use those figures and get away with it? They brag about putting $11.5 billion back into health care. This is true. But the member conveniently forgets that the government took $17.5 billion out of the system. With the money that is going in this year and the money that went in last year, we are going to be back to levels that we enjoyed 10 years ago. In the meantime, the population is aging and the population is growing.

[An hon. member]

Our own program spending is down $1 billion.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, Charlotte, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I just cannot believe the hypocrisy of the Liberals.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The other day it was ruled that hypocrisy was unparliamentary. I would ask the hon. member to withdraw and while he is at it, he should remember that Mike Harris is nothing more than a two tier health care lover and so are they.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

We have been around the circle on hypocrisy a number of times. I will go around the circle once more.

If a member refers to another member as a hypocrite, that is not parliamentary. If another member says that the minister was hypocritical, that is not parliamentary.

If a party or a member refers to another party's actions as a party in the abstract as being hypocritical, it is not in my opinion unparliamentary. It is the form and the context of the use of the word. The word hypocritical has meaning. It is a perfectly good word in the English language. We do not want words to be used to directly attack another member. The most innocuous of words can be unparliamentary if they are used in an unparliamentary fashion.

We will give the hon. member for New Brunswick Southwest 30 seconds to get everybody excited for the next speaker.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, Charlotte, NB]

Mr. Speaker, when the other member gets on his feet to talk, you immediately recognize flatulence when you see it or smell it.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

That is the end of the speech of the hon. member for New Brunswick Southwest.