Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to participate in this important debate on the budget implementation act, and to pay tribute initially to my colleague, the new finance spokesperson for the federal New Democrat caucus, the member for Winnipeg--North Centre, who has spoken eloquently on our perspective as New Democrats about the many shortcomings in the budget.
We put this in the context of a decade in which the federal Liberal government cut, hacked and slashed, not just to the bone but beyond, into some of the most basic programs of concern to Canadians. I want to give just a couple of examples of that.
I represent a constituency in British Columbia, the constituency of Burnaby--Douglas, in which we are proud to have a good number of co-op housing projects. In fact we have over 1,000 families who live in co-op housing. When the federal Liberals were elected in 1993, one of the first things the minister of finance did, who is now a candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party and who is travelling across the country talking about what a great prime minister he will be, was to cut, eliminate and wipe out funding for co-op and social housing in Canada. It was absolutely shameful.
We had just come out of nine years of Conservative government, and I had the honour of representing Burnaby during those nine years. Even the Conservatives did not dare to wipe out and eliminate federal funding for co-op housing. The Liberal government did that. Now the Liberals say that we are back in the era of surpluses. Now that we have this era of surpluses and they have been able to find millions and millions of dollars in tax cuts for some of the wealthiest Canadians, how much money has the Liberal government found for co-op housing in the last budget? Not one cent, not a penny of funding for co-op housing, even though it has found money for its friends in the big corporations, for the wealthiest citizens in the country. I say shame on the former minister of finance, on the current Minister of Finance and on our Liberal government. They obviously do not care about access to affordable housing and to co-op housing.
Another concern which has been raised on many occasions by the former health critic of the federal New Democrats and by me, my colleagues and our new leader, Jack Layton, is the shortchanging of the Liberal government in implementing the vitally important recommendations of the Romanow commission on the future of health care.
Roy Romanow spent a year and a half travelling across Canada, consulting with Canadians, collecting the best possible evidence on how to save our public health care system. He came to the conclusion that not only did we have to make some major changes in how we delivered health care, including for example the provision of diagnostic services specifically under the provisions of the Canada Health Act, but he was also very clear about the harsh impact of the cuts by the former minister of finance on the quality of health care across this country.
Once again, we saw the former minister of finance slashing funding for public health care, downloading onto the provinces and territories. One would have hoped that the current Minister of Finance would have responded to the recommendations of Roy Romanow. Instead the Liberals fell far short in their response. They left a huge gap, as the first ministers pointed out in their accord, a gap which my colleague from Winnipeg--North Centre calls the Romanow gap, between what was needed, as identified as critically important by Roy Romanow as he travelled across the country, and what the Liberals actually delivered.
To ensure the long term sustainability of public health care, Romanow had agreed with us as New Democrats that the federal share of public health financing ought to be returned as quickly as possible to 25%. I pause here to say that 25% is not a radical or revolutionary target. It was not that many years ago when the federal government was committed to 50%, to half the costs of our medicare system.
Roy Romanow has suggested that we at least move up to 25%. He urged that be done over a three year time frame. What has the Liberal government respond to that important recommendation? Instead of returning to 25%, the Liberal budget, which we are now debating, raises the federal contribution to only 20%. Even then, it is not after three years; it is after five years. Basically there is a shortfall of some $5 billion. That is the Romanow gap, $5 billion of funding that is desperately needed to strengthen and improve the quality of our public health care system. The Liberal government, which is awash in surpluses and which can find money for tax cuts, cannot find money to fund the basic needs of our health care system.
The Liberals have created another gap in the budget. It is what we call the Romanow accountability gap, because there is a of lack of clarity with respect to the numbers on health. We do not know for example whether the money that has already committed, the $13.2 billion committed to improving health care under the 2000 health accord, is old money, new money, new old money or old new money. Nobody really knows.
There is also the issue of the tax points and transfers to the provinces and so on. On that Romanow was very clear. He said that transfers to the provinces should be completely on a cash basis. There should be no more of this jiggery-pokery of tax points.
One of the greatest threats to public health care is the decision by the Liberal government to allow profits to grow even higher within an increasingly privatized public health care system. One of the real concerns we have raised over and over again in the House, raised by my colleague, my predecessor as the health critic who is now our finance critic, the member for Halifax, and also by our national leader, is the grave threat to medicare, to public health care, as a result of the growing impact of private for profit care. Yet the Liberals are absolutely silent on this. There is not a single means of ensuring that the new money which goes into health care under the provisions of the recently signed first ministers health accord will not be going into private for profit delivery.
As the Canadian Health Coalition and many others, including the New Democrat premiers of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, have pointed out clearly, that is a grave threat to our medicare. It is a double whammy in a sense. As the federal Liberals seriously underfund public health care and allow the growth of private for profit health care, there will be growing pressure from the Canadian public who see the waiting lines in some cases getting longer because of federal cuts in funding. The pressure will be of course that if we cannot deliver within the public system, maybe, as the Canadian Alliance suggests, we should be move to a kind of two tier American style health care system. New Democrats will stand here and fight and fight against any move toward that kind of regressive two tier health care system.
The budget we are debating today, in a number of very important ways, moves us further down that very dangerous road which would lead to an erosion of our public health care system.
There are many other concerns as well in terms of the budget and shortfalls in funding. The whole issue of crime prevention, for example, is one that is of great concern in my community of Burnaby. I have had the privilege of meeting with a number of community policing groups. They have pointed out that, as a result of some significant cuts in funding in the crime prevention area, public safety is in some areas being jeopardized. The funding for crime prevention and for commercial crime has gone down as well.
We still do not have adequate funding from the federal government for public transit and a return of some of those hundreds of millions of dollars that we as British Columbians pour into the federal coffers on the one hand, yet we do not see a penny coming back to British Columbia to support public transit.
You are signaling that my time is coming to an end, Mr. Speaker, and I am just getting started. I know the member for Etobicoke--Lakeshore will rise to give us a stirring defence of the budget, and I look forward with great interest to her comments.
As New Democrats we say the budget falls far short in some of the most critical areas including health care, foreign aid, housing, the environment and of course a number of other areas such as culture.