Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to enter the debate. There are two parts of it that I find disconcerting. Probably the most significant part is that the government of the day does not seem to accept the idea that health care is in crisis.
I took the liberty to get an official definition of the word crisis. There are two parts to the definition which are very significant. A crisis is defined as a decisive moment or a time of danger or great difficulty.
At this point in time the health care system is in danger. Is it the system that is in danger or is it the people who are in danger? I would suggest that it is the people of Canada who are in danger because the health care system is failing them.
I want to approach the definition of crisis from the point of view of the five principles of the health care system as laid out in the Canada Health Act. Those principles are accessibility, portability, universality, comprehensiveness and public administration. I want to look at each of them in turn.
The great danger is that what we are told we have and what we believe we have in terms of health care coverage is not what in fact we have. It is a bit like buying an insurance policy on a vehicle, thinking that there is appropriate and sufficient coverage for public liability, property damage and things of that sort, and then discovering when an accident occurs that the policy does not cover such things. What we thought we had we do not have. That is very dangerous.
We thought we had accessibility. The Minister of Health suggests that the health care system is not in crisis, that we have the five principles and that is exactly what it is all about. That is not the case. It is a bit like having a child showing the symptoms of an illness and the parent denying the symptoms by simply saying that the child is not sick. If the child is really sick the child's life is in danger. If we do not deal with it at the time, by the time we are prepared to do so it may be too late.
The time is now to recognize that we have a problem. It is up to the minister and the government to recognize that we have a problem. We are in a crisis situation. The people of Canada are in danger. If we ask the people of Canada whether they think Canadian health care is where it ought to be, they will tell us that it is not.
Does it mean the health care that is delivered is not delivered well? No. There are very good practitioners in Canada. I recently received some treatment from some specialists and they were extremely competent. The difficulty is to get it. It is not universally accessible. Accessibility should be available when it is needed, not some time in the future. That is a very important issue.
I will give the example of a gentleman who went to his family doctor and said that he had severe abdominal pain. The doctor looked at him and said that he would have to be referred to a specialist, which is what he did. When he went to see the specialist he could hardly make it up the stairs. There was no elevator. He was doubled over in pain by the time he got there, and without even looking at him the receptionist asked him if he were a patient of the doctor. He said no. In that case, he was told, he would have to wait at least nine months before the doctor could see him.
This man thought he had a health care system and he thought he would get service. He reminded the receptionist that he had a referral from his general practitioner, and she told him that he could not see the doctor for at least nine months. He left that doctor's office and 10 days later he was in the emergency ward of a hospital and within two days was dead.
Since 1997 there has been a 30% increase in the people waiting for care. In 1998 a total of 212,990 Canadians were waiting for care. In 1993 the average waiting time was 9.3 weeks. In 1998, five years later, the average wait was 13.3 weeks. That is an increase of 43% in a matter of five years. People wait for up to nine months to see a specialist, such as in the case I just mentioned. There are huge shortages in technologies like the MRI.
I refer to another incident that happened recently. We have two health care delivery systems in Kelowna, the general hospital and the cancer centre. There is an MRI machine at each of those locations. One of the machines broke down. Were the patients allowed to go to the other institution for treatment? No. They did not have the people to run the MRI in one case and the others were idle. Could they bring them over? No. It was a jurisdictional dispute. This is serious business.
Some will say that is not the health minister's concern. It is not directly his concern, but indirectly it is because there is an attitude out there that somehow the system is not geared to the patient but is geared to some other standard that has nothing to do with the patient. That is significant.
The second principle under the Canada Health Act is portability. How portable is it? I want to review a couple of facts. Any Canadian has the right to be treated for an injury that happens anywhere in Canada. The concept or the principle is that we should have treatment anywhere in Canada. People living in Newfoundland, British Columbia or the Northwest Territories should have access to health care anywhere in Canada. It should not matter where their health cards were issued.
Unless something has happened in the last couple of hours, Quebec patients outside that province are required to pay upfront because their government did not sign the portability agreement and cannot be counted on to pay. That is very serious issue. I looked around a bit to see if this were really the case, and it is. If Quebec chooses it will pay claims at the rates set in Quebec regardless of the cost of the service provided elsewhere. Many other people who go out of the province have difficulties getting medical treatment.
I happened to come across a family of a child that came from Quebec who had contracted some kind of illness in Manitoba. The child was taken to the medical clinic and the family was asked to pay upfront. The individuals said they were on a trip across Canada, for which they had saved over the last 10 years. They really wanted to travel across Canada. If they had to pay upfront they would have to spend their money on the health bill and would be unable to complete their journey. That was a serious infringement on what they thought they had. They thought they had portability but they did not. It is very serious when that sort of thing happens.
The third principle is universality, which really means that all kinds of issues are covered. What about access in a rural community?