Mr. Speaker, I would like to say to the Bloc member for Hochelaga--Maisonneuve that I will not be supporting this motion today.
I will not be supporting this motion because my vision of how this country should be run is totally different from the Bloc Quebecois. My feeling on what the Government of Canada's responsibility should be in relation to the whole health care debate is totally different from the Bloc Quebecois. The Bloc Quebecois, for the last number of years, has worked assiduously in ripping the guts out of this place, promoting separation, devolving and dismantling Government of Canada instruments which help keep this nation together. It has been too effective at times in allowing that to happen.
When we talk about the Bloc motion on health care we must go back not just to the work of Romanow but to the work of Senator Kirby. We must understand that the work of Kirby and Romanow was not their private work, their private thoughts or their private meditations on how we should approach the renewal and reinvigoration of the health care system. These exercises were about listening to Canadians from coast to coast, from all walks of life, such as health experts, ordinary Canadians, and men and women who sell services to the health care system.
When we talk today about Kirby and Romanow we are not talking about what they said as individuals but about what Canadians have said. Canadians have said they want the Government of Canada to reaffirm that we must have a universal health care system. Canadians have said they do not want any kind of privatization in the health care system. The privatization campaign that has been running rampant around here for the last seven or eight years must stop. It is totally out of control.
The number one issue for Canadians and in particular, young Canadians, is that foreign ownership has gone too far. It is close to 40% right now. Young Canadians are saying stop, enough. If we were to allow a single province to do any privatizing of any part of this health care system under the North American free trade agreement, our entire system would be vulnerable, and it would be the end of our health care system which makes our country unique. Canadians have spoken through Kirby and Romanow and they have said no to privatization.
Canadians have said they want the Government of Canada to stop being so devolutionary in its thought process and actions. They want the Government of Canada to reaffirm its activism. We are not a cheque writing machine up here in Ottawa. We have a responsibility to the men and women who elect us to get involved. This is not about micromanaging how hospitals are run on a day to day basis. If we are transferring billions of dollars to various provinces for health care, it is normal that we have some kind of a collaborative understanding on how those dollars are spent.
Mr. Romanow's recommendation that the Government of Canada be more active in the relationship with the provinces on health care is a good suggestion. That is not what I think, and it is not what Kirby or Romanow thinks. It is what Canadians have said over the last two years. This is what Canadians want.
My colleague from Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge has spent many years of his parliamentary life in the whole area of drug patent concerns and drug costs in this country. He has led the way for us in this chamber. Bloc members have told the Government of Canada not to interfere with their province. They have said to stay back, send the province the cheque and not to interfere. My colleague reminded me about the clutch that brand name pharmaceutical drug companies have around the throat of the legislature in Quebec and how they want to have the patent laws extended even further.
They are the most profitable companies in the world. They make more money than banks and countries, and the Bloc asks us to stand back and let these pharmaceutical guys do what they want. I do not get it. However, it will not happen, because Canadians are telling the Government of Canada that it has devolved too much. We have allowed too much foreign ownership, as Liberals, in the last number of years. Some $500 billion dollars from Canadian companies has gone into the hands of foreign ownership in the last eight years. It is awful.
What happens with foreign ownership? The CEOs of this country essentially sit there and they get their e-mails from headquarters, wherever those headquarters are now in whatever part of the world, it does not matter. Those messages indicate to them how they will run their business, how much research they will do, how much money they will put into new plant and machinery, and how they will vote and how they will influence legislators on the health care system in Canada.
On this issue, the Bloc has it all wrong. Anyone in the House, I do not care what side of the House they are from, who continues to pussyfoot and be grey around whether we should or should not get involved after listening to Canadians, through Romanow and Kirby, is at great peril if Canadians are ignored. If that happens the country will just dissolve.
I would even go so far as to tell the Prime Minister the provinces want to walk on this whole issue of how to reinvigorate health care after listening to Canadians, because that is what Romanow and Kirby are all about. The provinces want to put it to our head, and sometimes they can do that. I would go so far as to tell the Prime Minister, “Let us go to the people. Let us have an election on it”. I will tell everyone what would happen. The Prime Minister would be returned for a fourth term, even with all our faults, because Canadians do not want us to devolve any more of our national government responsibility to the provinces.
They are scared silly that if we were to devolve any more, if we let the provinces do what they want in this area, that there would be a possibility of privatization which would be the beginning of the end of our universal health care system. The chamber must fight that possibility with everything we have in our hearts and in our minds. We must, in a goodwill way, ensure that never happens on our watch.