Mr. Speaker, it was on October 24 of last year that I rose in the House to put a question to the Deputy Prime Minister, pointing out that there had been a number of studies prepared for the Romanow commission that looked at the potential impact of trade deals like NAFTA and the GATS on the expansion of medicare to include a national plan for home care, pharmacare and dental care.
In my question I asked the Deputy Prime Minister what steps the government was prepared to take at that time to prevent any further privatization in the health care field, to prevent private, for profit health care companies from claiming massive compensation under NAFTA and GATS. I asked at that time whether the Deputy Prime Minister and the Liberal government were prepared to stand up for public health care in Canada.
It was the parliamentary secretary who answered the question. I use the word answer very loosely because in fact he did not answer the question at all. He went on to answer something that was asked perhaps by another member but certainly not by this member.
Last week, we saw that in fact the government did answer the question. The answer to the question was that the Liberal government was not prepared to stand up and make it very clear that these trade deals, whether it be NAFTA or GATS or the proposed FTAA, must not be allowed to threaten Canada's public, not for profit health care system. In fact, there was not a single word in that health accord about the threat of private, for profit health care providers to our universal medicare system.
One of the gravest threats is the fact that under the provisions of NAFTA, for example chapter 11, once one of these big, multinational health care companies like Extendicare or MDS get a foot in the door, we cannot, in many respects, reverse that attack on our public health care system. If in the future a progressive New Democrat government under prime minister Jack Layton wanted to move ahead, for example with a national pharmacare plan, we would be told that we could not do that. The big health insurance companies like Liberty Mutual would tell us tough luck and say that we could not do that because under the provisions of chapter 11 of NAFTA we would have to compensate them.
I am calling upon the parliamentary secretary and the government today to make it clear to Canadians that they will listen to the concerns of Roy Romanow as expressed in his report. He noted in his report:
In almost every one of the Commission's public hearings, as well as the regional roundtables, concerns were expressed by experts and citizens alike that Canada's health care system should be protected from the impact of international trade agreements.
Two of his key recommendations, recommendations 44 and 45, clearly stated that this protection must be there. I am calling once again upon the government to make it clear that our public health care system is not for sale and that trade deals will not be allowed to be used to weaken universal medicare.