Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments. I agree completely that a national emergency is upon us now in the same way that we have faced national emergencies at other times.
At present our population is struggling under a critical health care shortage. There are ways in which we can address that shortage on a universal basis, which is the bedrock of this system. The most obvious way to do that is to look at our tax system as it now stands. There is a higher capital gains inclusion rate that we could be looking at. We could be looking at a new tax bracket for people who are at the high income rate. These are issues that have been adjusted downward to benefit the very wealthy in this country. What we have seen instead has been a colossal disregard for the health care of the people who are at the lower income spectrum in our country.
Absolutely, we can look at the tax system. The NDP believes that we need a fairer tax system. We do not believe that at the present time the tax system is working in a way that benefits our health care system or the majority of Canadians.