Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my 20 minutes with our deputy House leader.
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate today. As my colleague from New Brunswick Southwest has said, it is the first major health bill to come before this parliament. The bill would establish the Canadian institutes of health research. It is worthy of support and we in the PC Party support it because we feel it is a very good initiative.
In the process of supporting it, my colleague from New Brunswick Southwest put forth a number of amendments. However, we know that government members have not been supportive of any of the amendments, even though they sought to make the legislation much better.
I am sure we all agree that this bill is long overdue. This initiative was taken by the United States and most European countries some 25 years ago. We are about 25 years behind the times in setting up these institutes for health research, so it stands to reason that we have a lot of catching up to do. It stands to reason that we have a lot of ground to cover if we want to be competitive with the rest of the world in terms of medical research.
We in the Progressive Conservative Party have other concerns, which include the makeup of the boards and who will pick the people who will sit on the boards. For example, the president of the Canadian institutes of health research shall be appointed by the governor in council to hold office at the pleasure of the government for a term not exceeding five years. The governor in council simply means the cabinet or the prime minister, who will, in the final analysis, appoint the president. As well, each of the 20 members of the governing council will be appointed by the prime minister.
We have a lot of concerns about the appointments. At the end of the day the prime minister has the ability to determine the agenda of the council. We are not saying that will happen on every occasion, but the prime minister does have the ability to determine the agenda of the council. It becomes a question of control. That is why the government is not willing to entertain any changes to the council, how it is set up and who will appoint the people to the governing body.
The bill is good news for Canadians, with the exception of the political overtones attached to it. As my colleague from New Brunswick Southwest has said on a number of occasions, it is incumbent upon the government to tell the House how these institutes will be guided in their work over the next number of years. That is our main concern and the main reason we have introduced the amendments.
We are suggesting that there is a better way to do this. The government had the opportunity to listen to the opposition, and I am told by my colleague from New Brunswick Southwest that many of these amendments were discussed in committee and voted down by government members. The government should take a very strong and a very long look at the makeup of these institutes and consider some of the amendments which we have talked about.
The Prime Minister has been around for a long time. He has a history of opposing appointments of this sort, whether appointments to a board, to a council or to the Senate. We are saying that the formula is flawed and the House of Commons is the place to change it.
The bill is good news for Canadians with the exception of who calls the shots. The question goes back to the arm's length relationship with government and the independence that we would like to see associated with these institutes.
Our party cannot see where there will be any independence for these institutes. We think that the strong arm of the government will still be present on the very bodies it has created. We ask the government, is there not a better way to set up a body that will take us into the 21st century in medical research? These are very serious concerns in my view.
Another concern the member for New Brunswick Southwest commented on was the reporting mechanism. There is no provision in the bill that will allow the House to debate the performance of the institutes. We are very much aware the minister will table a report of the institutes on a yearly basis, but that will be the extent of it.
Parliament will not have the opportunity to review the operations of the institutes to determine if the body is making its mark or whether it is missing its mark totally. That is a very legitimate concern. We want the institutes to get off to a good start so that the body will not find itself in the same mess as the health care system finds itself in today.
Over the past few years the country has seen unprecedented amounts of money cut from health care and Canadians have suffered a great deal. The bill is welcomed as a much needed initiative aimed at improving the health of Canadians through a greater network of research institutes. However, it is clear that something must be done to improve health care if the health care institutes are to be successful because it all goes hand in hand.
The minister did not provide stable, long term funding for health care in the budget. Instead he provided a one shot infusion of $2.5 billion for health and education spread out over four years and spread out over 10 provinces.
The institutes should have their mandate expanded to examine the effect that all of this lack of funding has had upon health care. Funding has been spread pretty thin over the last four or five budget years, for which the Minister of Health has been responsible.
In my own province of Newfoundland, our share of the $2.5 billion which has been made available is only $10 million a year for a four year period. If half that money is used for health care, that will be $5 million spread over 34 hospitals and health care institutes in the province. That equates to less than $150,000 per institution, or about the cost of maintaining one extra doctor per institution.
Maybe these institutes should be examining the effect of the lack of funding on the province. Common sense will tell anyone that the amount of money that has been cut from the system today is having a devastating effect upon the provinces.
In short the minister's prescription for the health care system is the same as putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. The health care system needs money. The Liberals seem to run from that. They keep denying the fact that the system needs money saying that a new vision of health care has to be created for the country. It is something they will probably take into an election campaign. One has to wonder if the problem here is that the federal Liberals are more concerned about getting political credit for health care than they are about the actual delivery of health care to our citizens.
I see that my time has expired so I will turn it over to my colleague, the deputy House leader.