Madam Speaker, my colleague from the Conservative Party made reference to Saskatchewan Premier Romanow and the great job the NDP are attempting to do in the face of the massive cuts by the Liberals in terms of health transfers. As a matter of fact he made reference to the historic fact that Saskatchewan led the way by initiating medicare and starting a medicare plan for all of its citizens a full six years before NDP and CCF members of parliament persuaded the federal government to adopt such a program for all citizens.
Saskatchewan again is taking the lead in defining a new vision of medicare to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Premier Romanow for a couple of years now has been pushing for a national review of the medicare system to improve it. He now plans to concentrate on what is important in Saskatchewan because the federal government refuses to look at this issue in a comprehensive way.
This morning the premier announced the commission on medicare. The commission will be headed by health consultant Ken Fyke and will identify challenges facing medicare, outline potential solutions and engage the public and health care providers in a discussion of new ideas. The premier said that Saskatchewan pioneered publicly funded, publicly administered health care in Canada and today Saskatchewan once again leads the way in finding solutions to strengthen medicare and protect its core values into the future.
New Democrats believe very strongly that a family's health should never have to depend upon a family's wealth. This is the underpinning of our support for medicare.
My Conservative colleague who just gave his remarks on this issue was a member of the Mulroney government which initiated a plan of consecutive three year cuts to the health transfers to the provinces. The plan of the Mulroney Conservative administration, which was roundly rejected by Canadians in the 1993 federal election, would have made Canadians not just money deprived in terms of health care by this year, but it would have eliminated any transfers to the provinces for health care by the year 2000.
Could the member from the Conservative Party share with the House whether he supported that initiative of the Conservatives? His leader Joe Clark supports bill 11 in Alberta to privatize health care. Does he support his leader on that issue? Does he agree with the byelection results in Edmonton, which was run on the issue of bill 11 where the NDP candidate won with 60% of the vote in the Conservative province of Alberta? I look forward to his answers.