Mr. Speaker, no amount of speech-making about the faults of others, whether they be hospital executives, hospital management or provincial governments, such as we have heard from the Liberal member who just spoke, can absolve this federal government of the fact that it was responsible for the single most massive reduction in federal transfer payments to the provinces for health care that this country has ever seen.
That is the root of all evil. The lack of that money is the root of all evil when it comes to our health care system. It is what has put hospitals, emergency wards and other health care facilities in this country in the situation they are in today. It is what has set up premiers like Mike Harris and Ralph Klein, who, for ideological purposes, would like to privatize our health care system. They are using the federal reductions as a cover for their philosophical agenda.
The massive reduction in 1995 came on top of a systematic withdrawal of the federal government from funding for medicare that began in 1982 under a Liberal government. It was under one of the budgets of Allan MacEachen in which the first unilateral withdrawal of funding took place, and the first shattering of the federal/provincial fiscal partnership that medicare represented.
From then on, every single federal government has proceeded to unilaterally withdraw more and more money from medicare, particularly in 1995, the crowning glory of cutbacks that the current Minister of Finance brought in, until we arrived at a point where the federal government now feels that it does not have the moral authority to act, even when a province like Alberta has done something which is so clearly a threat to the spirit and the future and the practice of medicare.
Why does it feel it does not have that moral authority? Because of that systematic reduction, culminating in 1995, which puts the Minister of Health in the pathetic position of only being able to say to himself—and here we perhaps give him more credit than he is due—that he might want to act but he feels he cannot because the federal government has ruled itself out by being a government that only contributes somewhere between 8 or 13 or 15 cents on the dollar, depending on whose figures are believed.
There was a time, in 1984, in the context of a previous threat to medicare that developed through the proliferation of extra billing by doctors and the charging of user fees by provinces, when a previous Liberal government and a previous Liberal health minister, Monique Bégin, was able to act. Though it took a while to make them act. It took a lot of pressuring by the NDP at that time.
It has been a bit of a rerun for those of us who were there at that time. The NDP pushed the Liberal government to do something about health care. The Tories at that time were silent, in the same way that the Tories and the Canadian Alliance members are silent today with respect to protecting our health care system.
At least the minister of health at that time eventually acted and brought in amendments to the legislation that governed medicare in the country. It was not always called the Canada Health Act. It was the medicare act and there was another act. Those two acts were brought together and made into the Canada Health Act, which provided penalties for provinces that allowed the things which the federal government saw to be a threat to medicare.
The government has admitted that what is going on in Alberta is a threat to medicare. The difference is that this time we have a Liberal government that does not have the political courage, the political will, or whatever we want to call it, to act in a way that previous government did.
When the history of medicare is written, and when the eulogy for medicare is given some day, we hope not, but if it is ever given, they will point to this parliament, this Minister of Health and this Liberal government as the one federal government that not only should have done something about bill 11, but should never have done what it did in 1995, which created the context for bill 11 and all the other attacks on medicare that we have seen since that time.
Is this really a surprise? The Liberals like to take credit for medicare, but maybe they will not be so high and mighty about medicare from here on in because let us remember that they really only act when they perceive that they have to act. Only in this case they have even lacked the will to do that.
I am referring of course to the fact that the Liberals first promised medicare in 1919 to the people of Canada. When did they deliver? It was 1967. There is always a bit of lead time with Liberal promises. If we calculate the time between 1919 and 1967 we could figure out when those promises about pharmacare and home care will be lived up to. We just have to calculate the lead time that always exists between Liberal promises and delivery. Of course, some things are never delivered.
What we see here is part of a larger pattern that I do not have time to go into, unfortunately. However, medicare is one of the things that people value. It is on a list of things that have been under attack by the government. I think of medicare, the CBC, the CNR and Air Canada. I think of a lot of different public sector institutions, things that we have done through the agency of government, through the agency of public ownership. These things have been systematically undermined and destroyed by the government.
In recent days we have seen the reticence on the front benches to act with respect to the CBC. We see a lack of will when it comes to medicare. The government already sold out the CNR a long time ago, in one of the greatest acts of quizzling economics I have ever seen, and it finished the job on Air Canada that the Tories started. It has allowed the whole country to be bought up week after week by foreign corporations. It is not a record of which I would be very proud.
Despite all the great cheering that goes on in question period whenever a Liberal cabinet minister gets up to deliver one of those—I am not sure what to call it. I am trying to think of something polite. I certainly would not call it an answer.
I was astounded at the member who spoke before me, albeit he pointed to some legitimate problems that exist with respect to how hospitals are run and the way some provinces behave. However, the way the federal government acted in 1995, the way it has continued to act now that we have a surplus by not restoring full federal funding to medicare, and the way the Minister of Health has refused to act decisively with respect to bill 11 all adds up to a strong condemnation of the Liberal government with respect to health care.
All we have asked in this motion is for the government to do what is its responsibility to do with respect to medicare and what is within its constitutional jurisdiction. It can put conditions on the spending of its own money. It can say to the province of Alberta that it will not transfer money to that province if it allows for profit hospitals to provide insured services. It is within the power of the federal government to do that.
We say that it is against the spirit and the intent of medicare and of the Canada Health Act. If the Minister of Health does not agree with us about the current act, he should do what we have asked him to do today and change it, change the Canada Health Act as former ministers of health have done and create an entirely different situation.
We know when we are getting to the Minister of Health because he gets up and says that we do not have any ideas and that we are not putting forth any suggestions. We have put forward suggestions with respect to restoring federal funding so he has the moral authority to act and also with respect to innovation.
For years we have been talking in this place about how medicare was only the first step and that the next step was to develop a more preventive, community oriented model. Now we have suggested dealing with problems with respect to high drug prices and the provision of pharmacare and home care. I am just getting started on the way the Liberals sold out the low cost of drugs with their—