Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak on the take note debate on health care.
Last week was the ninth anniversary of my being elected and the election of the government across the way. One would think after nine years that we would have solved some of the problems instead of just having another take note debate. We have been taking note of health care for nine years and it is time to do something about it.
Within a month the Romanow commission will table its report. From the comments that have been made publicly by Mr. Romanow, it would appear that his major recommendation is that the health care system is fine, that it just needs a few more dollars and we just need to tinker with it.
I would argue that more money is not necessarily the answer. Day in and day out the Minister of Health gets up and brags about how much money, the billions of dollars, the government has put back into health care. It is convenient the government does not mention that it took out billions of dollars a few years ago. Even at that, after putting in all these billions of dollars, there are still problems with our health care system.
I would argue that the problem is that most of the new money which has gone into health care has paid for the increases in salaries for those who are employed in the health care industry. Seventy per cent of all health care dollars go to salaries.
British Columbia had to raise the sales tax half a per cent just to cover the doctors' pay increase. Doctors strikes from B.C. to Newfoundland and Labrador, nurses strikes, hospital workers strikes, more money into the system but the same waiting lists and the same problems remain. Somehow more money does not seem to be answering the problem.
Last week the Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology tabled its volume 6 report on health care. There was an extensive list of recommendations, but the one that received the most media attention was its recommendation that $5 billion more from the federal government go into health care spending.
The Senate committee proposed different ways of raising this money. One of the ways was to increase the GST by 1.5%. I assume that most members seem to have difficulty with this. I know the public does. Canadians do not feel this is the answer because most of them remember when the Liberal government said that it would get rid of the GST, but who knows.
If this were to be imposed, it would mean that in British Columbia for each $100 a person spent, they would be paying an additional $2 in taxes just for health care.
One of the other suggestions was that the federal government should institute health care premiums. Again, in British Columbia this is nothing new. We already pay health care premiums. We are only one of two provinces that do.
The Senate committee recommended that there be a sliding scale of premiums dependent upon income. If this plan were to be adopted, it would mean that the average two income family of three or more in British Columbia would be paying more than $2,000 a year in medical premiums.
Despite the notion that every Canadian is entitled to health care regardless of the ability to pay, this is not always the case.
A couple of years ago I raised the issue of a constituent of mine, Tim Jeffries, who severely broke is ankle. He went into surgery to have something done and he was asked if his health care premiums were paid up which they were not. It was not until his mother paid his back health care premiums that he was taken into surgery. He was actually removed from the surgery room until his mother paid his back premiums.
It was noted that in the fall of 2000 an estimated 200,000 British Columbians were not covered by health care. Five per cent of the population had no health care coverage because of their inability to pay the premiums.
If the government were to adopt the Senate recommendation, it would mean that B.C. families would pay twice as much. It would be interesting to know in our province alone how many people would not be covered and certainly across the country how many people would not be covered by health care premiums.
The Senate report also recommended that new programs be added, such as home care for post-operative and palliative care patients and that these programs be funded fifty-fifty by the province and by the federal government.
One can accept the fact that people and particularly the provinces would be very skeptical about that. In B.C. the provincial government already pays over $10 billion or 41% of its provincial budget on health care.
The province increased its health care budget by $1.1 billion last year alone. If the federal government were to implement this, it would mean an extra $5 billion, but for B.C. it would mean only $650 million. That would be a help, but it is certainly only a small portion of its budget. To get this small portion of its budget, B.C. would have to agree to spend it the way the federal government wanted it to be spent.
The provinces are very suspicious about any federal government commitment of fifty-fifty. In the 1960s a Liberal federal government made a commitment to the provinces that it would share the cost of health care fifty-fifty. Right now the Liberal government is only funding 14%. This is a far cry from fifty-fifty.
Federal fuel taxes were brought in and they were supposed to go into highways and other transportation projects. Yet only 3% of these taxes go back on transportation.
What about the federal government promise back in World War I that income tax would only be a temporary war measure?