Mr. Speaker, a budget is not just a financial statement or a statement on the financial health of a nation, rather, at its core, it is a statement about the health of a nation as a whole. It is not just an accounting exercise, but a reflection and representation of the values and vision that inspire and underpin it, of the sense of who we are and what we aspire to be as a nation and as a people.
Accordingly, as the member for Mount Royal I am delighted that this budget gives expression to the values and voices, the humanistic vision of my diverse riding. In particular, it addresses those core values that have permeated every encounter that I have had in the constituency and upon which I initially presented my candidacy for elected office.
First, the need for a universal, accessible, comprehensive, publicly funded, sustainable and renewable health care system. Second, the understanding that education is not only inextricably bound up with the imperatives of a knowledge-based economy, but is the defining signature of a society. Third, that the protection of the environment is not only intertwined with the economy, but with the health of society as a whole. Fourth, that affordable housing is itself a crucial co-determinant of one's well-being. Fifth, as I have mentioned elsewhere, the question: Is it good for children? is not only the litmus test of a commitment to human rights, but a litmus test also of the normativity of the core values of a budget. Finally, that gender sensibility should be mainstreamed in the budget as it should be mainstreamed in all public policy, that women's rights are human rights as I have stated elsewhere, and human rights mean nothing if they do not also include respect for the rights of women.
I will address two priority concerns in this budget, health care and education, which reflect priority concerns in my riding as they do in my province as a whole.
During the course of a take note debate on June 11, 2002, in this Chamber, I identified eight strategic priorities for health care in my province and riding of Mount Royal. What I propose to do now is look at how each of these eight strategic priorities find expression in the budget.
The first and most compelling need, as I expressed then and restate now, is for an increased supply of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals to meet current and emerging demands. Increased health care funding of $9.5 billion in cash transfers to the provinces and territories over the next five years could be used in part to hire these additional health care professionals, and $16 billion over five years to the health care reform fund would assist staffing concerns, as would $3.5 billion in the Canada health and social transfer to relieve existing pressures. There is still a concern expressed in the critiques of the Canadian Health Coalition, the Health Action Lobby, the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Healthcare Association that the funding is insufficient to address the human resources deficit in health care. This could adversely affect timely access to health care.
I am pleased that three of my strategic priorities namely, improving primary care, allowing for access to the right care, by the right provider, when and where they need it; strengthening of home and community care to relieve pressure on the more than one in five Canadian families who currently care for a sick or elderly family member in the home; and coordinating efforts to manage rising costs for pharmaceutical products, currently the fastest growing cost component of the health care system--and particularly an acute concern in Quebec--have found explicit expression in the budget in the form of $16 billion for a five year health reform specifically targeted to these concerns of primary health care, home care and catastrophic drug costs.
I am equally pleased that my four remaining strategic priorities namely, supporting the development of common indicators and monitoring so that we can measure, report and improve health care system performance; harnessing the potential offered by recent advances in information, Internet and communication technologies to enhance access to and better integrate the delivery of health services and electronic patient records; investing in new and enhanced health equipment like MRIs and CAT scans to reduce the wait time associated with diagnostic and treatment services and improve the quality of life; and renewing performance standards and expanding the use of standards also found expression in the budget.
These four strategic priorities have also found specific expression in the budget in the creation of a new Canadian health care transfer by April 1, 2004 to enhance transparency and accountability and ensure predictable annual increases in health transfers; in the $1.5 billion specifically earmarked for a diagnostic and medical equipment fund; in the $600 million to continue development of secure electronic patient records; and, in $500 million for research hospitals to the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
Governments have also agreed to create a health council that will report regularly to Canadians on the quality of the health care system so that Canadians can see how reforms are in fact being implemented and how their health care dollars are being spent; in effect, the institutionalization of an accountability principle in the budgetary framework.
The ultimate purpose of the health care accord, which was entered into on February 4 and 5 and which finds budgetary expression in the 2003 budget, is to ensure that Canadians have access to a health care provider 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This, in particular, will find expression in the increased ability and capacity for the CLSC, such as those in my constituency and elsewhere in Quebec, to have the human resource capacity and the other resources to deliver such services as timely access. Canadians need to have timely access to diagnostic procedures and treatment; have better access to quality home and community care services; and have access to the drugs they need without undue financial hardship.
If I am making specific and repetitive reference to the importance of access, it is because it is crucial to a health care system and to the qualitative character of that health care system that Canadians will not have to repeat their health history nor undergo the same test for every provider that they see; and that they will see their health care system as being what it aspires to be: efficient, responsive, adaptive and renewable to their changing needs and those of their families and communities now and in the future.
As well, the government will increase funding to address the specific health needs of aboriginal people. The health accord, which again finds expression in this budget, will, in addition to strengthening the equalization program and in light of improved federal fiscal circumstances which underpin the budget, the equalization ceiling will be permanently removed on a going forward basis.
I will now move to my second priority. Education is not only the motor that will drive our knowledge based economy but is an investment in our identities as peoples. I make that kind of reference because of the particular plural character of my constituency, one of the most multicultural constituencies in the country. In that sense, I am delighted in the singular budgetary investment in both access to post-secondary education and in excellence in university research, the whole with a view to establishing an educational system that is the best in the world.
I would like to make specific reference at this point to the budgetary investment and to the character of that investment in what will become a signature identification of who we are and what we can aspire to be as a people.
As we will recall, the government created the Millennium Scholarship Foundation to give young Canadians better access to post-secondary education. It established the Canada Foundation for Innovation to modernize the infrastructure of our universities. That has already awarded research grants to more than 2,400 projects, almost half of them in the health sciences, and it has created some 2,000 Canada research chairs to ensure that our universities can attract and retain the best faculties. I trust that these research chairs will also respond to the concerns that have been expressed about the need for a gender sensibility.
The budget also creates new ground. It creates new ground in the new investment specifically targeted which I think will make Canada a country that has the best educational system in the world and can compete on all levels with the best in the world.
Let me identify and enumerate, and for reasons of time I will do so telegraphically and enumeratively, the specific initiatives in this budget with respect to human investment and the investment in education.
First, the government will be increasing the budgets of the federal research granting councils by $125 million a year. Those federal research granting councils, and I speak here as a university professor, and the importance of that research will enhance in all levels of society the knowledge based economy as well.
Second, we will be institutionalizing a substantial federal contribution to the indirect costs of research, something that had been a concern of universities as they had expressed it to us and now is addressed in the budget.
Third, we will seek to help students better manage their debtloads by amending the Canada student loans program. At this point, protected persons in Canada, like convention refugees, can now be eligible for student loans.
Fourth, the budget will increase our investment in the Canadian Foundation for Innovation by $500 million, specifically for the infrastructure needs of Canada's research hospitals, and here it links up with the health care investor.
Fifth, it will extend new research funding to Genome Canada and the ALMA astronomy project.
Sixth, and of particular importance, and this too responds to a need that has found expression and representations made to us over the past years and that now finds protection in the budget, the government will create the Canada graduate scholarships program. When this program is fully in place it will support 2,000 masters and 2,000 doctoral students every year and it will support them at levels that make graduate programs in Canadian universities competitive with the best in the world. This new program, for example, will increase the number of graduate scholarships offered by the federal government by more than 70%, to around 10,000 a year, and 60% of the new scholarships will be in the humanities and social sciences, again addressing a certain disparity and responding to a concern as expressed to us by graduate students across the country.
Seventh, there will be a $12 million endowment for the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation to help expand its scholarships for aboriginal students.
Eighth, we will be contributing $100 million toward the creation of the Canadian learning institute which will help Canadians to make better decisions about the education of their children.
Finally, and of particular interest and concern to my own constituency which has an increasing number of new Canadians in its midst, Canada's distinct knowledge advantage and its distinct capacity to make a singular contribution in a knowledge based economy is built by expanding the skills of our labour force and by helping all Canadians who want to work, including new Canadians, to apply their talent and initiative to productive enterprise. Therefore we will be investing $41 million over the next two years to help new Canadians integrate into our economy, whether in the form of second language skills, in faster recognition of foreign credentials, or in pilot projects to attract skilled immigrants to smaller communities across the country. Our objective is clear: a new level of opportunity and potential to contribute for all Canadians, particular young Canadians.
I would hope that the particular priorities that I identified of health care and education, among the other, what might be called, social rights basket concerns, which reflect and represent not only the core values and vision of my constituency but I suspect the province as a whole, can make a dramatic contribution to the human welfare and the human condition in the country while making us competitive internationally in a human sense as well as in an economic sense.