Mr. Speaker, today the government has called for a take note debate on health care. We should point out that there does not seem to be a lot of taking note here. The health minister has not spoken. Some of the members who have spoken are reading canned speeches with no new ideas coming forward and just a lot of platitudes about health care. The country is owed a lot more from the government than just filling some space.
We hate to be cynical in this place and I know you are not, Mr. Speaker, but some of us do tend to be from time to time. It leads me to wonder whether this debate is not just designed to be a distraction from the nuclear fall out from the Kyoto implosion or whether the government has nothing to put on the agenda so it has just asked members to speak about health care because it knows Canadians care about it. It is difficult to say because there is so little focus from the government.
The lead-off speech by the parliamentary secretary which was about four minutes long said that we need to lead healthier lives. This is not what we would call leadership on the number one issue on the minds of Canadians.
If the government cared about health care, then we wonder why it has spent so much of its time and credibility making us all believe that spending billions and billions of dollars on an accord which will slow the production of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by .25% is a priority.
The government's own numbers are $16.5 billion a year to fund this Kyoto project that the Prime Minister has latched on to. If we have $16.5 billion a year the Liberals might be talking about putting that into health care if they care about it so much. But no, they are talking about putting $16.5 billion into slowing the production of carbon dioxide, which is not even a pollutant, by .25%.
That is the priority of the LIberals and yet they call a debate on health care when that is the kind of mess that they have put us in.
Let us try to add a little clarity to the debate by talking about the issues that the Kirby report of the Senate brought out last week. The main recommendations from that report were set out. I have a lot of respect for the work that the Kirby committee did. It took a lot of time to do this. It brought out six different reports, starting with the background of health care and a read of the international experience in health care because all countries are dealing with the same issues as we are: aging population, dwindling resources, escalating costs for technology and drugs. This is not something that just Canada is looking at but all countries are looking at.
The Kirby committee has done a tremendous amount of work. We owe it a vote of thanks and we should be talking about its recommendations. I do not hear the Liberals talking about the Senate report but we should talk about it.
First, Canadians should know what the Kirby committee is recommending. It is talking about a home care program for patients who are discharged from hospitals. The cost would be shared 50% by the provinces and 50% by the federal government.
I point out in passing that when health care was brought in, in 1968, the federal government said it would fund half of the health care system and the provinces would pay the other half. However it reneged on that promise. The federal government now funds an average of about 14% of our health care system and dumps the rest on the provinces. However it feels free to stand off to the side and carp, complain and criticize at everything the provinces do. It beat its breast about being the guardian of the health care system and the Canada Health Act while it throws a piddling amount of money at such an important program. I am a little skeptical of new programs that the federal government is supposed to fund fifty-fifty because it does not have a good track record on that.
Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be splitting my time.
The Kirby committee talked about a home care system for the dying so that a person with a terminal illness could die in comfort and dignity. It talked about capping the out of pocket expenditures on drugs so that it will not be ruinous for people whose drug costs run into the thousands of dollars. I have a nephew who must take a drug that costs him $200 a week. This young man is a doctoral student at McGill and does not have $200 a week. This is a real problem for him and for many other people whose drug costs are very large and who have no way of paying for them.
The Kirby committee talked about a national health care guarantee which would say to Canadians that if they cannot get the kind of treatment they need within a reasonable amount of time where they are, that the health care system would pay for them to be sent to another part of the country or to another country to receive that treatment. That is what the Kirby committee was suggesting.
It talked about a $2 billion investment for new equipment and upgrading facilities. The government likes to boast about the $1 billion it supposedly gave the provinces to invest in upgrading technology: buying MRIs, CAT scan machines and all those good things. However the federal government never did a thing to ensure that the money was actually spent on the upgraded equipment that it bragged about. We know very well that it was not spent on that, that the money went for things that did not fall into the category of medical equipment.
There is no point for the government to say it gave money if it did not ensure that Canadians actually got what they were supposed to for the money. It is not the government's money, it is money belonging to Canadians. If it was put out, cash on the table, to buy certain things, then the government has a responsibility to ensure those things were purchased. They were not in this case and if we are going to put out more money to purchase new equipment then we should ensure that those things get bought.
The Kirby commission talked about a $2 billion investment to develop a national system of electronic health records to bring us into the 21st century, to ensure that we have the kind of record keeping that keeps up with technology and allows us to be more efficient and accountable in the way the system is run.
The Kirby commission talked about $250 million annually to train more doctors, nurses and health care professionals. That is sorely needed. Some bright light a few years ago convinced the Liberal government that if it cut back on the number of doctors and nurses that were being trained then our health care costs would fall. If there were fewer doctors ordering fewer tests and doing fewer procedures, then we would not spend as much on health care. It does not take a genius to figure out that if we do not have doctors and nurses to do the job, Canadians will not be able to get the services they need and that is exactly where we are today.
The Kirby committee talked about a dedicated health care tax. We do not agree with that, nor do a lot of other groups. A dedicated revenue source such as the GST, which is not very popular, is much less stable than a general income base. Stability can best be assured through a legislated commitment to predictable and stable funding, which is exactly what the Canadian Alliance policy is. It states that a federal government would be committed to, and the provinces could be sure they would receive, x amount of dollars from the federal government each and every year on which to plan their health care delivery. Right now, who knows where the Liberals are?
They take away a big chunk, they chop health care funding and then they give a little back. The provinces do not know where they are. We do not need a dedicated tax because that only artificially links funding to expenditures. We need real accountability by having proper reporting on the system, which is what the Kirby committee recommended.
If the government really cared about health care it would not have cut the heart out of it by chopping support big time. It would not be fighting with the provinces and the people who are trying to deliver health care with very little help from the Liberal government. All the Liberal government does is complain, criticize and attack the other players in the health care system while doing almost nothing to make sure the system works. It would have some real proposals to put on the table.
However the Liberals are not even talking about the proposals that other people, like those on the Kirby committee, have put on the table. We just hear blah, blah, blah from over there. They have no plan. It is just a day spent. Why? Because the Liberal government had nothing else to talk about and it thought it would be good to talk about health care, but it is not putting anything on the table.
Canadians deserve better from the Liberal government.