Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her comments. She has talked about points that have not been raised today. We are not talking about prevention, because we are debating a motion the meaning of which is hard to figure out.
This is ridiculous. It would have been much more interesting to have had a motion inviting a debate on precisely the points my colleague just raised.
Why did the government move this motion? I think it is not very clever. It did not have to look very far to come up with such a meaningless motion, which says that there is an on-going public discussion of the health care system.
The health care system has been talked about for years. We have been talking about it since cuts were made in the Canadian social transfer. Ever since, provincial governments have set up commissions to assess the needs and priorities of their citizens. In Quebec, the Clair commission did a fine job.
Why did the government appoint commissions such as the Romanow commission or have the Kirby committee produce a report? Today, all of a sudden, we are reminded that it might be a good idea to discuss the situation of our health care system in the House. Clearly, the government cannot fool the public all the time. What is going on here does not make sense. We saw it during oral question period. This is unprecedented.
Everyone was flabbergasted. If this goes on, we should stop our proceedings and adjourn, because it is ridiculous. It is beyond comprehension. In order to move motions such as this one, the government must really think that we cannot sit in this House. They tried to pull a fast one on us to be able to keep going next week, because seemingly there is not much on the legislative agenda.
This is really not serious. If the government had been serious, it would have used some of the money available, some of the surpluses that the Minister of Finance will announce. This is no secret. We know what the minister will announce on Wednesday in his economic statement. Everyone knows.
Indeed, everyone knows that there is an $8.9 billion surplus. If the government had been serious, it would have said, “We are having a debate because part of this surplus must be given back to the provinces to help deliver health services to the public”. It was agreed long ago that health care would be accessible to everyone, under the five basic principles governing health care services.
Now, there is a need for money. This is normal. Everyone agrees on the reasons why the provinces need money. As I said earlier, it is because of the aging population, because of the cost of drugs, because of the new technologies and because of research.
It is easy to understand. Why does the federal government stubbornly refuse to give the money back to the provinces, when their needs are so urgent?