Mr. Speaker, I am sharing my time with the member for Bras d'Or—Cape Breton.
I want to say how pleased I am to take part in this debate as a member for parliament from Saskatchewan, the birthplace of our cherished medicare system. I also want to acknowledge all of the hard work that has been done by our leader, the member for Halifax, and our health critic, the member for Winnipeg Centre, to keep this issue first and foremost in parliament over the last several months.
I would like to begin by picking up to some extent where the previous speaker ended in terms of setting the history of what has happened over the last 40 years. As many Canadians know, this is our most cherished and most important social program. It started in Saskatchewan where it was finally brought in by former Premier Tommy Douglas and his successor Woodrow Lloyd in 1962. It was a program that took 18 years to deliver because the Government of Saskatchewan at that time was adamant that it was not going to bring in the program until it could fund it for the long haul. It took from 1944 until 1962 for the program to come in.
Five years later it was extended to the rest of Canada by the then Prime Minister Lester Pearson on the basis of 50:50 funding. I remember well that premiers like John Robarts of Ontario and Ernest Charles Manning of Alberta wanted nothing to do with socialized medicine, but they could not resist the 50 cent dollars that were on the table so everybody joined in. In 1967 we got a national medicare program.
As I said, it has been a cherished program. Until the last few years, medicare has been something Canadians have been justifiably proud of. They have talked about it as they have travelled throughout the world and visited other countries.
The question before us today is what has happened in recent years to the program, which we were so proud of in 1990, 1991 and 1992, that we are anxiety ridden as to whether we will have a national medicare program in the next short while? There are a number of reasons.
There have been cutbacks. I would submit that the principal problem we have today happened in 1995 with the Canada health and social transfer and the end of the Canada assistance plan and established programs financing. At that point the government, on its mantra for balancing the books and eliminating the deficit as quickly as possible, took more than $24 billion out of our health care system.
When we talk about the problems the provinces are having, whether it is Alberta, Saskatchewan or another province, they are problems driven by the lack of cash in recent years from the federal government. Provinces have had to resort to backfilling. Notwithstanding the comments of previous hon. member, the province of Saskatchewan has backfilled 100% on the cutbacks to federal funding for medicare. I worked in the department of health of that province for a brief period of time before I was elected.
I would also submit that many other provinces have done the same. The modern day John Robarts, Ernest Mannings, Mike Harrises and Ralph Kleins have basically no commitment to medicare, especially when there are only 11 cents, 13 cents or 15 cents of funding instead of the 50:50 funding they once enjoyed.
At some point in time, sooner rather than later I would submit, one of those provinces will tell the government to forget its 11 cents or 13 cents and have its own health care system. That will be the end of the national medicare program, which concerns us a great deal.
The government has taken billions out of health care. We have an aging population, as the Minister of Health said earlier in the debate. We have a number of new technologies. Health care is not getting less expensive. We have more demand and less money. There is simply not enough money in the system but the culprit is across the aisle.
I urge members of parliament to concentrate on that issue and not get too bogged down in the backbiting of which province is doing what. Although, having said that, I want to come back at some point before I close to what is specifically happening in the province of Alberta.
I have tried to suggest that there is an end to the partnership and that 1995 was a watershed in that regard. We now have a government of a province with very little commitment to health care, to medicare. I do not think that is reflected accurately by the people of the province of Alberta, but bill 11 would set up a legislative framework for surgical facilities offering overnight stays as far as we are concerned. It would also offer diagnostic and treatment services, services for both medically necessary surgeries as required under the CHA and elective surgeries.
I have been involved in various organizations that have been fighting privatization for decades. The pattern is always the same. Privatization occurs where there is a fast return on profits and the more expensive long term care is left to the public. When we talk about tonsillectomies, cataract surgery and hip and knee replacements, we are talking generally about relatively minor short stays in hospital, quick release in 24 hours or less. People are back home and recovering and not a burden on the health care system. That is what people interested in privatizing our health care system want to do. They will leave long term care for the public system and we will quickly end up with two tiers. That is the heart of what the bill and bill 11 are all about.
By way of conclusion, the initial announcement back in 1995 was that cash transfers would be cut by 40% and for most provinces the cash portion of the transfer would ultimately phase out. In future under the CHST it would be up to the provinces to decide how to allocate their much reduced cash transfer.
I should like to make mention of one point that has not been talked about in the debate. It caught my eye last week that five of the largest pharmaceutical industries in the world have now decided in their benevolence to do something about the horrific problems with the outbreak of AIDS in Africa. They have agreed under an umbrella agreement that they would provide AIDS related drugs to Africa at a much reduced cost. I guess we would say that is a very noble endeavour on the part of the pharmaceutical industry.
We can think about what is driving the cost of medicare and pharmacare in Canada, the high cost of drugs, and the fact that we had to comply with Bill C-92, the 20 year patent protection and the inability to use generic drugs. How is it that the pharmaceutical industry can arbitrarily say that it will provide these drugs as a noble endeavour to the continent of Africa? We in Canada are prohibited from saying that we would like reduced pharmaceutical costs to benefit our population from coast to coast to coast and keep the costs of our health system down.
As I indicated I am sharing my time with the member for Bras D'Or—Cape Breton, but I am pleased to have had the opportunity to participate in this important debate today. I look forward to hearing from members of all parties on the issue.