I am told he is a good Newfoundlander. That tells us something about the quality of care we will get in New Brunswick from this gentleman. We are quite impressed with his credentials. The story in the June 10 edition of the Telegraph Journal was headlined “Health-care cost spiral can't go on” and started out by saying:
Health Minister Dennis Furlong expects the province's annual health-care bill to top $2 billion in five years.
The article indicated that was in the best case scenario because presently New Brunswick spends about $1.5 billion, which will rise to $2 billion in the best case scenario, and that the province would be forced to spend almost 50% on heath care for its citizens. Referring to the federal government, the article continued:
We're at a stage now where we have to tell them that we can't go on. If it continues to go on it's them that are putting pressure on the Canada Health Act, not the provinces.
I think all of us in the House, at least those of us on this side, are in agreement with that issue. The federal government is putting the provinces into a situation where they cannot sustain their system. According to the article, Dr. Furlong went on to point out what was going on in Ontario in defence of his case:
Dr. Furlong said Ontario is estimating that 60 per cent of its provincial budget will be taken up by health care spending by the year 2010 unless something changes.
When we have the premiers doing what is being done in Saskatchewan, as an example, it tells us something is wrong. It tells us that these people across the aisle in the Liberal government have mismanaged that file despite the promises they made back in 1993 and 1997 via the red book. That was a convenient sort of political thing to do, was it not?
Let us go on. In terms of criticism of the government Tom Kent, who is sort of the social architect of the Liberal Party and I believe a resident of Kingston, Ontario, and despite the fact that he is a Liberal, most of us in the House would agree has a social conscience. When people like Tom Kent speak most of us listen because he does have a statesmanlike stature about him on the issue of health care. He said that federal action was required. Brian Stewart on The National interviewed Tom Kent last evening on the news. He said that federal action was required, because he is smart enough to know what the present Prime Minister does not understand, that the Liberals are in the driver's seat and that they have to show leadership on this issue. They have not done so for seven consecutive years.
What amazes me is that they are suddenly realizing that we had better start talking to the 10 provinces, our partners back home. We have to get them into the same room and come up with a solution. It has taken them seven years to realize that there has to be some kind of meaningful dialogue between the provinces and the federal government.
The truth is that they poisoned the atmosphere back in the 1993 era when they started to make draconian cuts to health care after having promised that they would not do it in the 1993 election campaign.