moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should, in line with the Arthritis Society's Canadian Arthritis Bill of Rights: (a) recognize every patient's right to timely and accurate diagnosis, and to improved access to new medications; (b) ensure patients, wherever they live, enjoy the same quality of care; and (c) to achieve these goals, consider restoring federal funding to 25% of healthcare spending, moving towards restoring the federal contribution to 50% of total healthcare spending.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on an important concern shared by all Canadians, and that is the right of access to timely medical diagnosis and treatment regardless of income, education, social standing or geographical location.
My motion is in the form of a patient's bill of rights, a bill of rights to ensure that our national medicare system continues to serve the health care needs of all Canadians.
In putting this motion forward today, I want to pay special tribute to the Arthritis Society of Canada for its inspiring initiative on behalf of arthritis patients. The bill of rights that it put forward for public consideration was developed in co-operation with the Canadian Arthritis Patient Alliance and in collaboration with 18 arthritis stakeholder groups across the country.
Its campaign is: one of raising public awareness and reinforcing the right of patients to timely medical diagnosis and care; second, the right of patients to informed consent on treatment, including access to information on treatment options and the full range of helpful medications; and third, the right of patients to research and representation.
I want to for a moment put into perspective both the nature and the extent of the concerns that lie behind the arthritis bill of rights. I want to do so by sharing four simple facts.
First, four million Canadians suffer from some form of arthritis. Second, 600,000 Canadians are disabled by arthritis. Third, arthritis and other musculoskeletal diseases cost the Canadian economy $17.8 billion a year. Fourth, there are 100 different forms of arthritis. Luckily they fall into three groups: degenerative arthritis, inflammatory arthritis and non-articular rheumatism.
For more details about the extent to which the lives of Canadians are affected by arthritis, I would refer all members of the House and members of the public to consult the very informative website of the Arthritis Society at www.arthritis.ca.
I want to take the opportunity to salute the Arthritis Society for its emphasis on prevention and on the responsibility of patients to promote and protect their own health through their lifestyle choices and through education.
It is well established that early and accurate diagnosis of illness is the most reliable and effective treatment. Missed or delayed diagnosis results in debilitating injury and premature decline or unavoidable deaths.
The second step that the Arthritis Society points out so very capably is ensuring access to necessary treatment options, to treatment modalities, including specialists where they are required, surgeons where they are necessary, rehabilitation services and appropriate medications. That is where Canada's cherished health care system comes into the picture.
We know that this year's Canada Day will mark the 40th birthday of medicare, first introduced by the New Democratic Party, or its predecessor, in Saskatchewan.
Over the span of barely two generations, medicare has become a symbol of unity in our country, a system which characterizes Canada as a compassionate nation and makes our identity and our citizenship so precious. Medicare reflects our fundamental Canadian values: sharing, equity, community spirit and compassion.
In a Toronto Star op-ed article, Charles Pascal recently wrote about his coming to Canada some three decades ago. He said the following:
The Canada I fell in love with was one where...we owed each other as neighbors [and] was expressed by our investment in universal health care and public education.
Fortieth birthdays are not always easy. It is shocking that some appear willing to surrender this precious legacy. It is even more shocking to realize that among them are those who are charged most directly with protecting our health care system.
I think we all know now, it is a matter of record and it is a matter of human suffering, that the infamous 1995 budget dealt a serious blow to health funding and health quality in this country. In hacking away the social services funding and killing the Canada assistance plan on top of reductions to our health transfers, the 1995 budget struck a further blow to the capability of community service agencies and municipalities to deal with the social and economic determinants of health, which are equally important.
That budget set a pattern which has now become the doctrine of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance: oppose, elect and then embrace. First, during an election vigorously oppose a right wing policy. Second, get elected on the basis of that opposition. Third, once elected, embrace that right wing policy that was so vigorously opposed on the campaign trail. The Liberals as we know did that with the GST. They did it with free trade. They did it with funding for public broadcasting. We know that they did it with health care cuts.
At the same time, we know that we have suffered massive cuts to health funding. Despite the government insistence that the funding levels have been restored for a public not for profit health care system, we know that the restored funding does not even bring the level of funding for a public health care system to where it was in 1993 when the Liberal government was elected.
We know that when those cuts were taking place, there were major increases in health care costs and requirements. Those have resulted from at least five different sources: first, expensive technological advances and life prolonging procedures; second, the costs associated with a rapidly aging population; third, insufficient focus and certainly insufficient funds for prevention, which the Arthritis Society has pointed out; fourth, an almost total ignoring of environmental health and of occupational health and a virtual ignoring of the overall determinants of health; and fifth, extended drug patent monopolies which have made prescription drugs the fastest rising health care cost in the country.
The provinces and communities had to battle, find funds to make up for the federal cuts, or cut services and close beds in the hospitals. In Alberta, Ralph Klein went ahead and approved private hospitals and for-profit clinics. In Ontario, Mike Harris made it known that he was behind Alberta all the way.
Now we have a new federal health minister who basically says “that is okay with me”. Sadly, we have to recognize that we have in the cabinet of this government today the most pro privatization health minister in a generation. After a string of federal health minister pledging eternal loyalty by day to the Canada Health Act and shredding it by dusk, at least the current health minister is more honest than her predecessors about where she stands.
Let me say that she is deluded if she thinks that Canadians support her soft on privatization position.
How bad has it become? It is bad enough that the Prime Minister's former colleague, Monique Bégin, broke her silence a couple of months ago and openly criticized the Liberals in no uncertain terms. Here is what she said:
The feds are...not sharing fairly in the risks of a constantly evolving and growing health care system, the burden falling squarely on provincial governments....For both accountabilitypurposes and for good governance, we should revert back to the spirit of a 50-50 cost-sharedarrangement, block-funded by cash transfers established in multi-year blocks.
Madam Bégin has advocated an immediate move to a 25% federal cash contribution in health care spending from the current level of 14% to 16%.
I do not need to remind the House that Monique Bégin is no gadfly. She is a highly respected former cabinet minister, former colleague of the Liberal members on the government benches today, who is very much credited with having brought in the Canada Health Act. She did so working in collaboration with progressive citizens and with devoted health care workers, especially the nurses of this country.
I want to reiterate that the danger this chronic underfunding poses to the quality of health care is obvious, but it also puts the nature of care, and that is public health care, in severe jeopardy. Federal funding is the only level that Ottawa has in enforcing the standards of the Canada Health Act. As that funding has eroded, Canada's right wing provinces have become ever more bold about bringing in a second tier of private for profit health care.
The ultimate expression of that boldness came two months ago with Alberta's Mazankowski report. That document was a virtual smorgasbord for increasing the share that individuals would be required to pay for health care, like higher premiums and medical savings accounts, or as one highly respected health policy analyst has called medical savings accounts, the Enron of health care.
Canadians deserve to know whether this federal health minister is prepared or not to champion Monique Bégin's prescription for nursing the medicare system back to a state of health. So far the minister's only answer to that question when I have had an opportunity to put it to her in the House has been, and I quote, “The NDP leader is the only person in the country who thinks Ottawa's health funding is insufficient”.
Cherished Canadian values, like social justice and social solidarity, are being sacrificed on the alter of the almighty market. It is time to turn that around.
Across the country today, Canadians are conscientiously engaged in the Romanow commission hearings, trying to have some influence and some say in the future direction of health care in Canada. With their participation and their presence, they are showing their commitment to medicare every day and in every city where the commission meets.
I want to reinforce tonight the point that it is past time that the federal government made a similar commitment, by committing today to restore federal funding, first, to a 25% share of health care costs in Canada and ultimately to restoring full 50:50 funding of health care.
As we debate the importance of the principles and concepts embraced in the bill of health of the Arthritis Society, let us keep in mind that these principles, these aspirations and these needs will only be satisfactorily met if the government commits to an adequate level of funding.
Let us not leave those aspirations as expressed in the arthritis bill of rights as simply words on a piece of paper. Rather, let them be a contribution to our realizing the dream of all Canadians to ensure that people's health care needs are met when and where they are required to be met, regardless of their income and regardless of where they happen to live in this country.