As my friend from Vancouver says, look at what they have done. The Liberals must be hanging their heads in shame about what their party and what their government have done to health care. The cash transfers have been cut back. What does the federal government fund now? Is it 14, 15, 16 or 17¢ on the dollar as cash transfers to the provinces?
I know the parliamentary secretary says they are getting tax points, but he should have heard the CMA and the nurses this morning when they talked about tax points. If tax points are transferred to the provinces to cover some of the costs of health care, at the very best about 30% to 35% is being covered. However the power of the federal government is also being forfeited to enforce national standards. If there is a transfer of cash the federal government can withhold the cash to the provinces for implementing user fees, setting up private clinics or violating the Canada Health Act.
If Ralph Klein decides to violate the Canada Health Act and the federal government is only putting about 13% or 14% of the cash into an economy as strong as that of Alberta, Ralph Klein can just thumb his nose at the federal government.
I know the parliamentary secretary had to be here this morning when I was at the finance committee, but if he were there to hear the CMA, the nurses union and other people express their concern that the federal government must eventually fund once again half the cost of medicare or health care in terms of cash transfers, I am sure he would be moved by the argument. He would lobby the Minister of Finance to mend his conservative ways and go back to a national health care program eventually funded 50:50 by the provinces and by the federal government.
That is what we need. We need a strong federal government with a vision of making this our Canada, making this a stronger country, making this a country of which we are very proud. That is what should be happening in the budget that will be before us in the next month.
We should be leading the way in terms of a new international vision or a new world order to come to grips with some of the problems we have today because of starvation, famine, the AIDS pandemic in Africa and the like. We should be leading the way by articulating a vision of an international economic development organization that starts putting money into poor countries of the world and a vision of a modern day Marshall plan for the development of places like Africa and to make sure that places like Afghanistan have a chance to develop and their people have quality of life, some food to eat, some medical services, some housing and some education.
Those are the kinds of things we should be doing internationally. When the Minister of Finance goes to the IMF, the World Bank, the G-20 and other international fora, he should be speaking proudly of the motion we passed in the House two years ago to endorse the idea of the Tobin tax, a small tax on the speculation of currency around the world. I proposed that private member's motion which was carried by the House in a vote of 164 to 83 in March 1999.
This would go a long way to curbing some of the speculation on currencies we see today. Speculation is one of the problems we are having with our dollar: speculation on our dollar and on other currencies and the retreat of currencies into the United States as people visualize it as a bigger and stronger economy.
Our minister should have an international vision of some order and some regulation in terms of currencies in the world, a vision of putting more and more money into international development. If we had a Tobin tax in the world today where more than $1 trillion a day is speculated on currency markets, a small tax of 0.1% to 0.5% would create an international development fund of several hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars each and every year.
Let us imagine the kind of world we would have if we could spend tens of billions of dollars a year on international development.
Today we spend about $10 billion a year on the United Nations and the world spends about $800 billion U.S. on armaments and military equipment. We should flip those priorities around. Our country should be leading the way with that kind of international economic and social vision, which would help make this country strong.