Mr. Speaker, this is certainly an interesting debate and I am very pleased to take part.
Health care is the number one issue in the country. There is no question about it. The reason, of course, is that we fear for the future of health care if the present government continues the way it has since its election in 1993. It has been in power for seven years. In that seven years we have seen the erosion of health care. What is even more frightening is that it has no plan.
Most of us would take a little comfort in action being taken by the government, in any action it might take. What we have basically said all along is that without a plan nobody knows. Without a plan we cannot predict the future of health care.
The difficulty in Canada, in the eyes of most Canadians, when they compare our health care system with others, is that we see what is happening in the United States. People in the country south of us do not have a health care system which is universal and managed by the federal government. Basically they have a health care system which is managed by, run by and controlled by litigation lawyers and insurance companies. We have all heard the horrendous stories in the United States of families going bankrupt because of the burden of health care forced upon them because they are sick. In other words, there is no one there to help them. We do not want to see that happen in this country.
In this country about 9.5% of our gross national product is spent on health care. In the United States that percentage is around 14.5%, the difference being that in Canada everyone is included. In the United States about 40% of the population is excluded from any health care coverage at all.
What this boils down to is that the health care system we have in Canada, in terms of the percentage of our GNP, is actually a good deal for Canadians. We want to see it preserved, but there is no evidence on the part of the government that it intends to pay attention to it to ensure that we will have a system down the road.
I have with me a couple of documents which I thought most Canadians would enjoy. I have the two red books. I will be quoting from both of them, red book one and red book two. Incidentally, one of the books was written in preparation for the 1993 election, the infamous red book one, which has a section on health care.
In the 1993 election members of the now federal government, then the opposition Liberals under the leadership of the present Prime Minister, promised some things in terms of health care. I want to show how the Liberals have deviated from what they said they would do to what they have actually done.
If we are unfortunate enough to have these people in office in the year 2004, by that date they will have effectively taken $30 billion out of health care. That $30 billion represents the crisis we are experiencing today. They have simply taken too much money out of the system.
None of us would stand in our place to argue that money alone would solve the problem, because it is about more than money. We are talking about a plan. We are talking about everyone getting together in the same room and talking about a strategy, a game plan, which will take us through the next 15 to 20 years.
I will read from red book one, which was the Liberal policy platform going into the election, which incidentally brought a lot of Liberal members into the House in 1993. We are going to hear some grumbling on the other side because I am getting into something that is very painful for them. I am reciting, line and verse, what they ran on in 1993. Here is the promise which is found at page 77, under the title “Canada's Health Care System”:
A Liberal government will face these challenges squarely, thoughtfully, and with confidence. Our approach will be based on our values. Our solutions will be predicated on our commitment to the five fundamental principles of our medicare system...
A Liberal government will not withdraw from or abandon the health care field.
Those are the very principles which we are debating today. Quoting again from the same book:
Liberals cannot and will not accept a health care system that offers a higher quality of care for the rich than for the poor.
In other words, according to the Liberals in 1993 we would not have a two tier system. We know what happened.
I am going to table this document. We will at least send it upstairs for Hansard to use in getting the correct quotes, the page references and that sort of thing, because we want it squarely on the record.
What did the Liberals do between 1993 and the election of 1997? They extracted over $17 billion from health care. Why were they able to do that so easily, so effectively and without a lot of criticism?
At that time just about every province in the country was Liberal. The Liberal premiers of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island nodded in agreement. All of the Liberal members of parliament nodded in silent agreement as money was hacked and cut out of health care.
On this side of the House the Bloc Quebecois was the official opposition. It was focused on one thing: leaving Canada. Those members had one thing on their minds: a new country. They were not focused on health care. They did not care.
The other major party in the House at that time was the Reform Party, now known as the united alternative. No matter what the government did to health care, the reformers would not stand to protect it. Nothing could be too draconian for the Reform Party. If the government had simply massacred the system completely, taken it down to ground zero, the Reform Party would have been pleased with that. Basically there was no intelligent debate in this House on health care between 1993 and 1997.
To make matters worse, the Liberals went into the 1997 election looking for a deathbed reprieve. They had put some money back into health care, but not enough. They knew they were in trouble. They had taken out $17 billion and they had replaced $1 billion or so, thinking that would do the trick leading into the election.
They did not do it, of course. They did not fix health care. The sad thing about this whole story is that in the 1997 election they went on to promise more. Let us read what they said in the 1997 red book.
The 1997 red book was their policy book for that election. We just heard in red book one what they promised. They completely reneged on that. I guess most parties would have abandoned their position, knowing that they had misrepresented the Canadian people in the election. No, they did not. They had the gall to stand and say the same thing all over again. On page 72 of red book two it states:
Medicare is a cherished legacy that we will never abandon. The Liberal government remains firmly committed to the five fundamental principles of health care in Canada: it must be universal, accessible, comprehensive, portable, and publicly administered.
However, they simply abandoned us again. They went on the same—