He does not want her. I can understand. This is an interesting situation. I thank the NDP for putting the motion forward today. We owe it to all of our constituents to talk about the issue of health care, the issue of bill 11, the issue of whether or not it is enough, the issue of the tax points and the issue of cash transfers. It is very confusing. All my constituents want us to do is to fix the darn system. They do not care much about who is responsible.
Part of the difficulty, however, is that we have this convoluted mechanism called Canada whereby we have entered into agreements. Members opposite know full well that the federal government's role is to collect revenue from around the country and redistribute it to the provinces for various services.
We are not allowed to deal directly under the terms of the constitution and the agreement. It is up to us to provide a certain floor, ceiling or whatever. It is clearly up to the provincial governments to deliver the health care services to the people. All we need do to find out the difficulties is to have a loved one who is involved in it.
Since I am here most of the time, my wife and I, and my wife particularly, are going through the terrible experience of having a family member with a serious illness who is in and out of hospital. She is phoning 911 at three o'clock in the morning and frantically going to the hospital where she is being kept for two or three days and then discharged back into her home. Then it is 911 again and the ambulance costs. I am talking about this occurrence happening five or six times a month every month for the last several months.
We have tried to find out how we can put her into some kind of a care facility to ensure that someone is available to take care of her and can react to it. The waiting lists are incredible. We are talking years, unless one is in a position to do what the former Reform Party and current CA would have us do, that is simply privatize it all. Then if one has the money the waiting list disappears. We do not believe in that. I think this debate is all about a vision for health care.
The New Democrats should always be congratulated for the leadership that some of their former leaders, Tommy Douglas and others, showed in bringing into Saskatchewan and then on to the national stage the necessity for a health care system based on the five principles.
The first one is universality, which means that it is available to all regardless of financial status.
The second is accessibility, which means that we should be able within any kind of reasonable timeframe to access whatever health care is needed.
The third is comprehensiveness, an issue that I think the provinces are flirting with, never mind bill 11. When they start deregulating and decommissioning certain health care services from OHIP, in the case of Ontario, and start saying they will not pay for certain services, in essence they are flirting with damaging the comprehensiveness of the system. That is an issue I have not heard members talk about today. I think it is something we need to watch very carefully.
The fourth is portability, the ability for a Canadian from British Columbia, Nova Scotia or Ontario to access a comprehensive health care plan right across the country.
The fifth and final one is administration. What is the issue there? The issue is that if we do what some would do, if we do what Tom Long, the former leader of the former Reform Party and the former treasurer of Alberta who is a member of the former Reform Party, public administration goes out the window. I am sure hon. members get my point in using the word former.
Why is that important? Canadians know that there must be a sense of control in costs and in what kind of health care is being provided. If it is turned over to the private sector in a for profit scenario, I think we lose that control.
I want to talk about another issue. The New Democrats should be particularly interested in this one. There is a health clinic in my home of Sault Ste. Marie. It is a health clinic that operates on a capitation system. In a city of 80,000 with two hospitals there is also a health clinic. Capitation means it submits a roster, a list of the members of the health clinic, to the provincial government and the provincial government gives the clinic a cheque. It does not operate on the OHIP principle. It operates under capitation.
Who do we think built it? It was not the government. I can tell hon. members that no provincial or federal money was put into the health clinic in Sault Ste. Marie. It was built by the private sector, except that the private sector in this case happened to be the United Steelworkers of America. It was built by the union. It was built with its funds, with its membership money. It was done in the fifties and it was great. The reason I know a bit about it is that my dad was the national director of the union at the time it was built.
I often quote a man named Johnny Barker in Sault Ste. Marie who was a great union leader. He had one of the greatest lines that I like to tell NDP members they should remember. Johnny Barker once said “Don't let your bleeding heart run away with your bloody head”. It is a terrific quote and NDP members should think about it more often.
Johnny Barker and my dad built the health clinic in the Soo. Some say it was a fight between Sault Ste. Marie and Hamilton. The reason it went to the Soo, they tell me, is that dad and Johnny Barker used to get together and drink the odd glass of pop. They got to be great buddies and they decided the clinic should go to the Soo.
Who knows what the reason was? However, do members know why it was so effective? It was because there was a large membership, which tragically does not exist there any more, that worked at the steel plant. There was a local community that could be harnessed. There was a membership that could be developed and brought in for health care services, and it worked.
I have tried to promote this idea in other communities. I went to the Chinguacousy Health Board in the city of Brampton when I was in the provincial house and suggested that it take a look at the model in the Soo. It is a terrific concept. It involves the community. It makes sure that health care is delivered. It was built with private dollars. It is operated on a not for profit basis and it truly works.
Instead of just putting their blinkers on and saying that under no circumstances will they look at anything, perhaps members of the NDP should take a look at what happened in Sault Ste. Marie. That clinic, which was built with union money, could be a model for many different communities around the country.
In the case of Chinguacousy I thought it made sense to get the CAW and Chrysler involved. Again a certain membership or a group of people could be identified to be involved. Perhaps the region of Peel could have been involved. Unfortunately it did not happen because people still had the grandiose idea that great new hospitals would be built.
We have a wonderful hospital in my riding, the Credit Valley Hospital. We call it the Credit Valley Hilton. Those days are over. We will not be building those kinds of facilities any more. We have to find new ways of delivering both in terms of medical services and in terms of the facilities in which they get delivered. We have to find new ways of doing it.
Instead of just fearmongering and pretending that none of this should be talked about, and that we should just amend the Canada Health Act and punish people, we need to look at news ways and new alternatives. They exist. I invite the NDP members to check the record, talk to the steelworkers and check out the operation in the Sault. I think they will find it is good advice.