Madam Speaker, I would make several comments in response to the question.
My first comment has to do with the American style of health care referenced by the member. If anyone has had any indepth involvement with people in the United States, they know just how precarious the system is and just how many people are left to suffer because they do not have access to health care and do not have insurance coverage. It is not uncommon to hear about people dying on the operating table because they did not have the money.
We were all shocked when Reformers stood in the House over the last couple of years and said things like “I can get better health care in Florida than I can get in socialized Canada”. We were shocked when the Leader of the Reform Party, just a month ago, stood up in the House and said “We should look at private sector investment in health care”. We were shocked this week when the finance critic stood up before Canadians and said “We have to look at opening up health care to private sector involvement and investment”. That is not the solution.
Let us also be clear that when it comes to this budget in terms of spending, what we really ended up with is a Reform style budget with all the focus on tax cuts and very little on the priorities of Canadians, the number one priority being health care. What we have in this budget is two cents for every dollar in cutbacks, in tax rollbacks from the government. Is that a response?
What the provinces want is a commitment from the government to restore transfer payments; the money it took out in 1995. The provinces are quite prepared, on the basis of that commitment and that determination, to get back to a 50:50 partnership, to in fact work to strengthen medicare, to restructure medicare and to improve medicare. We have to do it on the basis of a financial commitment from the federal government and the political will to truly preserve and strengthen medicare.