Mr. Speaker, first of all we support access of patients to health care.
The member mentioned that the minister talked about meaningful change. He said we want to talk about reform, ideas, vision, planning. What reform? What vision? What ideas? What planning? I have not heard a single reasonable specific suggestion from the minister ever on how we can ensure that people will have access to health care when they need it.
Money is not all of the answer but it is part of it. When every single hospital in Quebec is running a deficit, no one can tell me that all of those hospitals are mismanaged. Those hospitals and the nurses and doctors in them are trying to cobble together a system for the people of Quebec but they do not have the resources to do the job. No one can tell me that when I cannot find a pillow for a patient with congestive heart failure in the emergency department that it is good health care, or that money does not make a difference. We need both. We need ideas for reconstructing our health care system and we need the money to do the job.
I will put it in a nutshell. The member knows full well what I am talking about. There is the aging population, the more expensive technology, the fact that we are asking for more, that we have more demand, the fact that our tax base will shrink because more people will be retired than working. Those are the facts and that is where the squeeze exists.
We have to put patients first. Is an institute that puts patients first and makes a profit a bad thing? Will we begrudge that? That is not the issue. The issue is to make sure that no Canadians will be deprived of health care because they do not have enough money in their pockets. All of us would support that to the end of our days.
What we do not support is the system right now where governments prevent Canadians from getting access to health care because they are withdrawing and withholding support because they do not have the money. And because governments do not have the money, patients are not getting access to health care.
In the 1960s people did not have access to health care because they did not have money in their pockets. Now it is governments that are depriving people of health care because they do not have the money in their pockets. Surely there is a middle ground. I have articulated it. We want to make sure that patients get health care. I have shown them the way.