Mr. Speaker, the question is, what are we going to do? I will tell the member what the New Democrats are going to do. We are going to fight, with every single breath of our being, to reduce the presence and influence of the Alliance Party in chipping away or carping away against our public, not for profit health care system.
I meant what I said earlier when I said that when the government does the right thing we will be there to stand with it. I want to again give the Prime Minister credit. He understood, although he may have caused the problem together with his finance minister, that embracing those policies, going the route of reducing federal funding and opening the door to private, for profit medicine, was actually causing tremendous damage to the system.
At least the Prime Minister understood that there are problems in Saskatchewan, problems because the federal government has reduced across the country the federal contribution to health care from 50% down to 14%. At least he recognized that the premier of Saskatchewan has a long record of fighting for health care and implementing health care, even under the difficult and adverse conditions caused by this Liberal government.
One of the things we would have liked to have seen in the throne speech was a clear, unequivocal commitment from the federal Liberal government that the recommendations of the Romanow commission will indeed be acted upon, acted upon with a sense of urgency that is desperately needed.
Finally, for the member who chose to bring out an example, and we all have examples of patients who did not fare well in the health care system, let him begin to acknowledge the truth. If we go farther down the road that Reform advocated and the Alliance Party persists in advocating, as recently as yesterday with his own leader once again advocating it, then we will not have a public, not for profit health care system to hand on to Canadians, and that is our first and foremost responsibility in this session of Parliament: to get back on track with a solid commitment to a public health care system that works.