Madame Speaker, I am torn—strong words maybe—by this speech, but at least I understand the reasons behind the bill presented by my friend and colleague, the member for Ottawa—Vanier, with whom I had the pleasure and honour to sit on the Standing Committee on Official Languages, along with other colleagues here.
I do not object to the messenger or the message per se, but I will go a little further. When the member for Ottawa—Vanier asks us to amend the Canada Health Act by adding a sixth principle, namely linguistic duality, the goal is noble. My colleague's purpose in introducing this bill is also justified and justifiable.
Where I have a slight problem is with the desired results. We want to offer communities that live in a minority situation—let us call a spade a spade—offer Francophone communities in Canada services in their language, where numbers warrant.
Is the member for Ottawa—Vanier's approach of amending the Canada Health Act to meet this objective of offering services in French to Francophones the right one? The bill would add the following after section 12:
12.1 In order to satisfy the criterion respecting linguistic duality,
(a) as soon as possible, the province shall, in co-operation with the facilities of the province that offer insured health services, develop a program ensuring access to health services for members of the province's anglophone or francophone minority and, in so doing, shall take account of the human, material and financial resources of each facility—
Already we have a problem and this is the reason for the Bloc Quebecois' main objection to this bill. It says “as soon as possible, the province shall, in co-operation with the facilities of the province—”
In fact, it is right. It is the province that must establish the priorities. It is the province which, under the Constitution, under the Health Act, provides services to clients, patients, individuals, and the public. It is up to the provinces to define this.
The bill says “—the province shall, in co-operation with the facilities of the province that offer insured health services—”. In fact, this is a provincial jurisdiction.
Even if we circumvented that, which would cause us no end of pangs, but if we did decided to go ahead anyway, supporting Bill C-202 even if this is a provincial area of jurisdiction, the excuses we used are also available to the provinces. They could tell us, “We are taking into account human, material and financial resources, in not providing access to services as stipulated in clause 12.1”.
I know that it would be fallacious, a misuse of the bill as presented to us, but unfortunately I think these would be the excuses the provinces would come up with. When there is reference to sufficient financial resources and we know that there is a problem everywhere in Canada with health care funding, it seems to me that they will throw the argument of insufficient financial resources back at us.
If I may, I will point out that this bill would be hard to implement in Quebec, not because we are any better than anyone else, nicer, better looking or whatever, but because we have already given some thought to this. I would have liked to have heard some comments on this.
We in Quebec enacted Bill 142 back in 1986—when, I believe, the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis was in cabinet—guaranteeing access to health services in English throughout Quebec.
Here is what I would propose to my colleague from Ottawa—Vanier: why do we not work together to promote interprovincial reciprocity agreements based on the principle of Bill 142, which Quebec enacted back in 1986, thereby respecting provincial jurisdictions and saying we merely want the reciprocity of what is the practice in Quebec?
If I wanted to make political hay with this—which I don't—I could draw a parallel with the Young Offenders Act and its implementation in Quebec. The desire was to make blanket changes, and this went over like a lead balloon in Quebec. It is not that we were opposed to preventing youth crime, that we had anything against virtue, or against young offenders, but merely that we had a different approach.
This bill affects me when it states that there will be blanket coverage. If we agree to that, first of all we would be recognizing the first five principles, which are not recognized in Quebec, although applied. If we are to recognize a sixth, we will have to recognize the first five. But what if a seventh, eighth or ninth were to appear later, what would we hear? “You agree with the first six, but not with the other three”. It is a sensitive issue.
In ten years, education might be a serious issue in Canada, it might be such a serious issue that the federal government may want to interfere in the area of education. If we accept it for health, because the situation is so serious, then we might accept it for the environment because it is also experiencing serious problems, just as we accepted for education. What jurisdictions will be left to the provinces? Will they have any areas of responsibility?
The goal my colleague, the member for Ottawa—Vanier, wants to attain is legitimate and worthwhile. We too want to attain this objective, which would allow French speaking communities to be served in their language.
What is Quebec doing, in concrete terms, to help? My colleague from New Brunswick is here. The University of Sherbrooke offers medical courses—he is a doctor, to boot—to students from New Brunswick so that francophones in that province can be served in their language.
There are interprovincial agreements. There is a willingness on Quebec's part. However, I do not think that the way to reach the objective of providing francophones with French language services is by adding a sixth principle. I think this approach sidesteps the problem.
It is perfectly legitimate to raise this for debate in order to propose another approach in the end, and I would like to invite my colleague to consider another approach.
For example, let me give him another suggestion. I was reading in his speech that he has waited five years to introduce his bill. It gives me no pleasure to tell him that we are against the bill, even though we espouse the principle that francophones should have more services in French.
However, I would propose another suggestion: Bill 142. There may be a few others that could apply here, but Bill 142 recognizes provincial jurisdiction. It recognizes that each province must provide, across its territory, services to minorities, in this case, in French.
It is important to remember that the Canada Health Act, created in 1984, has never been recognized. It is applied, but it has never been recognized in Quebec, because it intrudes into areas of provincial jurisdiction.
It is unfortunate to talk in political terms about an issue as sensitive as health, but we have to. I will remind the House that when the last two reports of the Commissioner of Official Languages were tabled, a journalist by the name of Elizabeth Thompson asked me the same question, “Do you want to subject transfers for health to the Official Languages Act?”
I can easily see a province like Saskatchewan, Manitoba or Alberta having its transfer payments in health cut, having problems with hospital waiting lists and so forth, even resulting in some deaths, and then being told that it is because they did not respect the Official Languages Act.
I think this is, I repeat, a sensitive subject, and simplistic solutions should not be provided for complex problems.
The committee is already looking at Part VII of the Official Languages Act. It could be very interesting to see how, in respecting provincial jurisdiction, francophone communities could be encouraged to obtain services.
If there is meddling in this area, I fear that, next, there will be meddling in the environment or education. It is unfortunately for this reason that we want to work to provide services, but in a different way that will, I hope, be as effective for those communities that are truly in dire straits as a result of the government's inaction.