An Alliance member just said “What about the Liberals?” I too want to say to the Liberals “Welcome to the debate”.
If there was any telling comment about the productiveness of this past parliamentary session it has been the lack of a clear discussion and debate on the future of our health care system. I hold the Liberals responsible for this lack of accountability to parliament and to the people of Canada.
I say to the Alliance members “Welcome to the debate”. This is something we have been trying to push to the top of the parliamentary agenda day in and day out for the past several months, from the day the federal budget was tabled and we were informed of just how serious this federal government took the crisis in our health care system. The government responded to the most critical situation facing health care in the history of this country by tabling a budget that gave two cents to health care for every dollar it spent on tax cuts.
At that moment there was no one else in this Chamber speaking up, joining us in calling on the government to act appropriately and responsibly in the face of the serious critical situation facing health care.
We were alone, day in and day out, week after week, raising this issue without any support, and we will continue to do so. We have not only used every question period available to put this question to the government, we have presented to the House two motions using our two opposition days on this very question. We have called for support from all sides of the House for an increase in transfer payments. Did we get the support of the Canadian Alliance? No, we did not. Of course we did not get the support of the Liberals. That seems to be a given.
We presented a second motion in the face of the most critical development in the history of medicare, that being the passage of bill 11 in the Alberta legislature. We put a motion calling upon the government to stand and either enforce the Canada Health Act, or, if that was not possible, to amend the Canada Health Act to prohibit private for profit hospitals.
Did the Canadian Alliance support us? No, it did not. It does not need to be said again that the Liberal government did not support us either.
No one supported us on those motions. We have stood alone, day in and day out, trying to hold the government to account and raising the number one issue facing Canadians today. Thank goodness, at least to this point in time, in the dying days of this parliamentary session, the Alliance has finally decided that perhaps there should be a discussion here in parliament.
We are pleased to participate in this debate. I also want to acknowledge though, because I do not want to issue total blanket statements about lack of involvement by the Alliance on this critical issue, the work of the health critic of the Canadian Alliance, who has tried along with others to have this matter addressed by the health committee.
Members will know that during the whole period that we were dealing with the fall-out of the abysmal federal budget and the rise of Ralph Klein's for profit private agenda the minister avoided the debate here in parliament. He avoided the health committee. In fact, he deliberately manipulated our agenda at the health committee so we could not have the debate.
Let it be absolutely clear that at the point when it was the most pressing time for all of us to come together to debate health care and deal with the serious threats to the future of medicare the Minister of Health took every measure he could to dictate to the Liberal members on the health committee to prevent us from having the debate.
Where is the debate taking place? Not in parliament. Not in the health committee. Except for the one or two days that we presented motions, there has been no ongoing, serious, long term discussion about this issue. Where is that taking place? In the other chamber. In the Senate.
This is the most pressing issue for Canadians. Surely to goodness it ought to be before parliament. Why did the Minister of Health, when he knew the concerns of all parties in the House, when he knew how Canadians felt, come to the committee and try to dictate what it should be studying? It certainly was not our universal public health care system. It certainly was not.
When confronted about why he did that he said “The committee is master of its own destiny. It can choose to do what it wants”. If we can choose, how is it that he tried to deliberately influence the agenda? How did he manage to get through to every Liberal member of the committee so that we did not have that opportunity?
This is the last day of the session. The health committee is not discussing this issue. Parliament is hardly discussing this issue, and the crisis continues.
Although this issue has not been thoroughly debated in parliament, the motion today gives us an opportunity to discuss the future of health care and put things into context.
The Alliance motion poses the challenges that we all have to deal with. However, we question what is really behind this motion, obviously. As we have noted in the debate today, time and time again the Canadian Alliance has stood in the House or outside the House to advocate private for profit health care. I mentioned in my remarks earlier that every single leadership candidate for the Canadian Alliance has in one way or another advocated this kind of private encroachment on our health care system. Just this past week Stockwell Day said that we should trim the health care budget. The month before, Stockwell Day said that we should stop the intrusive health transfers. The member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca is clearly on record as calling for a parallel private health care system. Today he is quoted in the London Free Press as saying “Establishing private clinics in hospitals in Canada is the key to aiding the country's health care system”.
It does not stop there. We know where Tom Long comes from. He is either the protege or the actual force behind Mike Harris.