Madam Speaker, I will start by deviating from the prepared remarks I have and comment on the question that was raised by the hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona. Presumably he was referring to CHST payments and Bloc grants.
I was involved as the Reform Party's senior researcher in 1995 or 1996 when the CHST legislation was proposed. It was really a rehashing of the legislation that permitted the former Canada assistance plan and the established programs financing plan to exist. We put forward some detailed amendments which, like all amendments that came forward in committee, were of course voted down and never given a fair hearing.
At that time I looked at the details of funding and how it was withheld when non-compliance occurred with federal standards under the CHST. What was striking about it was how utterly discretionary it was.
For instance, the Minister of Health decided whether a violation has taken place. The Minister of Health at his or her sole discretion decides whether or not a penalty is appropriate, what the amount of that penalty should be, whether it should apply in one province but perhaps not in another province and if compliance has not been achieved whether the penalty should continue. What we see is a situation in which we do not have a standard that is enforced by any kind of impartial mechanism.
We have a standard that is enforced, if it is enforced at all, based on political considerations. Is it a province in which the government holds a lot of seats? Is it a province in which it might hold a lot of seats in the future, if it does the right thing? Is it a province that is assertive in standing up for its rights or is it one that can be easily intimidated by the government? Is there an election coming? Has an election just occurred? Is this going to play well elsewhere in the country? There is a whole series of considerations that have nothing to do with providing for satisfactory health care.
We made recommendations at that time that would have created some form of right of appeal of citizens or of provincial governments before the Federal Court of Canada. The court would then make the decision whether or not a standard was being violated.
It would also have the salutary effect of actually defining some of the national standards under the Canada Health Act, which are often not as clear as they ought to be. That would have been a real step forward. All of that was put aside. Much of it was actually incorporated in the 1997 Conservative platform which my leader cited today.
The idea of trying to get co-operative national standards is a bit more detailed than finding some form of standard to which there is an agreement to co-operate with and therefore an enforcement mechanism. None of that has been done. Therefore we would find that the Canada Health Act and the block transfers that are given under the Canada health and social transfer would continue to be as they are now, that is, extremely ineffective in ensuring enforceable, meaningful national standards.
I would now like to draw the House's attention to the fact that the motion we are debating today fits within a growing stream of voices from across the country that are calling for an end to the imbalance that exists under which the provinces have the vast majority of the spending needs. It is because they are assigned the most important social programs under our constitution and under which the federal government draws in most of the revenue and therefore redistributes it. This is a problem that has existed for a very long time.
If we look back to Confederation, the Fathers of Confederation provided for per capita cash transfers that continue to this day but they are very small because they were in nominal dollars and the economy has grown and inflation has taken place. Nevertheless, there was a system set in place for transfers to provinces and, I should mention, these were non-discretionary. They could not be withheld for any reason. Therefore there were some assurances the provinces would operate effectively within their spheres of jurisdiction.
Listening to the voices in recent decades over the need to return to the original intent and spirit of the constitution, we find that many of the voices have come from Quebec.
For example, there was the Tremblay Commission in the 1950s, last century. There was former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who said in 1957 that there was no real basis for the federal spending authority in the constitution.
There are also the interim report of the Quebec Liberal Party special committee on the political and constitutional future of Quebec society that came out in January of this year, the report by the constitutional commission of Action démocratique du Québec and the Séguin commission.
All of these groups are talking about the transfer of tax points.
Outside of Quebec we see the same concerns being raised with an ever clearer voice. For example, an eminent scholar, Thomas Courchene, has recommended some form of tax point solution to the fiscal imbalance that exists in Canada. The so called firewalls group in Alberta has called for something of this nature.
The Canadian Alliance has been a consistent voice in favour of using some form of tax point system that would ensure our economy grows and that the health care needs of our aging population would be met without going through the song, dance and chicanery that went on when the government cut its own expenditures by a mere 6%. At the same time as it cut transfers to the provinces for health care and education, by I believe 20% to 25%, it also tried to lay the blame for the lack of health care spending on the provinces.
The tax point solution was also the policy of the former Reform Party. It was an excellent policy and one that we can all stand behind. I was involved in actually drafting the policy so I will read it for the benefit of the House. It states:
The Reform Party supports the establishment of an agreement to replace federal cash grants to the provinces with unconditional transfers of the tax base of each province, adjusted for differential provincial economic development so that the provincial tax revenues collected in each province will grow in parallel with the growth in the province's economy and population. This will allow the content and particulars of provincial policy to be set by provincial government clearly accountable to the electorate of that province.
Something needs to be said when the point is made about being accountable to the electorate of a province. Sometimes it is suggested that the federal government ought to impose national standards because the federal government knows best what Canadians care about and what is important to them. That means we must accept that the voter who goes out and casts a vote in the province of Ontario or Quebec is acting less responsibly and has less of a social conscience at that moment than he or she does when casting a ballot in the federal election. It infers that somehow there is this schizophrenia in the Canadian voter, that we are a hardhearted and uncaring people when we vote provincially but when we vote federally, boy we sure do care.
That is obvious nonsense and the only way it gets through is because there has been a really concerted effort on that side of the House to maintain that fiction. There is a very powerful vested interest in saying that the Liberals are the responsible ones here, that they are the ones who dictate what is good, fair and right in the country and that they protect our interests.
As I mentioned in my comments to the hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona, the record shows that the federal government's performance in this area has been appalling. It has been shameful, inconsistent and politically based. It has not been based upon any kind of fairness or objectivity.
When other parties such as our own have come forward and proposed ways in which it could be made fair, objective and actually guarantee that health care and other national standards would be maintained through an agreed upon, consensual process that would be enforceable and would reflect the will of Canadian voters, it has been rejected out of hand without any hearing whatsoever. That is unfair and it should be changed.
The tax point solution proposed by the eminent authorities I have cited and also by the Bloc Quebecois today is the best solution. I encourage all members in the House to vote for it.