Mr. Speaker, as health critic, I will focus on some of the health aspects of the budget.
I find it very interesting, when we look back on the election, that the Liberal promise was to fix health care for a generation. Yet we see nothing in the budget that deals with a generation or even with the short term crisis we see in the health care system today. The budget only puts some of the money back that the Liberals ripped out of the system in the mid-1990s. Despite some of the funding commitments, the budget is still full of questionable initiatives and glaring omissions.
In 2004 the government will direct $150 million worth of gasoline tax to pay for medical diagnostic equipment. The question is, why will gas taxes be used for medical equipment? Are gas taxes not intended for transportation related areas? What is next? Will the GST be earmarked for the Governor General?
The government again fails in the budget to make any commitments to compensate the hepatitis C victims affected by tainted blood pre-1986 and post-1990. The hepatitis C fund is extended for a year, which offers no long term commitment to help all the victims. The health of hundreds and even thousands of people infected with this virus depends upon a national strategy to help address hepatitis C. Furthermore, those infected by tainted blood before and after the 1986-1990 window have never received adequate compensation. Therefore, the government has failed on two fronts: one, addressing a national health problem; and two, ending a grave injustice which was caused in large part by the government.
The government will take five years to develop a mock vaccine. This is far too long a time to wait. Health officials have warned an epidemic could happen at any time.
The budget only offers a one time commitment for catastrophic drugs, $500 million in 2005-06. There is no long term commitment to this necessary measure. Both the Romanow and Kirby reports recommended that the federal government establish catastrophic prescription drug insurance plan as an important first step in reducing disparities in drug coverage and enhancing access to needed drug therapy.
One in ten Canadians do not have adequate drug coverage for catastrophic drug needs and are at high risk for financial hardship from prescription drug expenses paid out of his or her own pockets. It is inexcusable that this budget does nothing to address the disparities that prevent the most disadvantaged from receiving health care.
I will note that the Conservative Party had a plan in the last election for catastrophic drug coverage. Since the Liberals seem to sometime try to use our platform ideas, that would have been a good one to cherry pick, but again they always forget to pick the good ones.
Furthermore, the budget commits $170 million over five years to help ensure the safety and effectiveness of drugs and other therapeutic products. The government has already committed $1.2 billion to Infoway to improve drug safety by creating electronic patient records. Yet hardly any of the $1.2 billion has been spent. It sits unused in a bank account while patients continue to get sick or die due to prescription errors and other complications. It is unlikely that a further $170 million commitment to improve drug safety will be put to any better use than the unused billions that sit in health related government foundations like Infoway.
In reality it matters little how much the Liberals commit to health care if Canadians have no way of knowing what effect their money is having on the system. As the ultimate authority in health care, the federal government affects the health and well-being of Canadians. It should therefore accept responsibility for decisions made and the actions taken that affect the health care system. Yet the Liberals, the self-declared defenders of health care and guardians of the Canada Health Act, consistently avoid answering for their mismanagement and deceit. Thanks in large part to the lack of transparency and parliamentary oversight, the Liberals do not have to account for the results of their decisions.
As someone who has relied on the health care system in the past, I find the lack of accountability deeply troubling. Some examples are $4.25 billion will be paid to a third party trust from which the wait time reduction transfers will be paid, according to this budget. Reducing wait times is important and necessary, but yet again the Liberals conceal their more selfish intentions and hide behind a cloak of secrecy. Recently released legislation will give the Minister of Finance or Minister of Health the ability to add any amount of money to the wait time reduction trust whenever he wants. This is yet another means by which the Liberals can hide money and distort the budget surpluses.
It is very concerning that these foundations are unable to be audited by the Auditor General. How do we know if the moneys are being spent appropriately? The fact is we do not. If we use what we do know about the Liberal government, moneys are being wasted on these foundations too. I hope this is not the case, but it may be.
We have creeping privatization by stealth. Of the $125 billion spent per year on health, $30 billion is on private care. Yet the annual government health report fails to even mention private care at all. No mention is made in the reports of the 34 private MRI clinics that operate across Canada, despite the health minister's ongoing attack on clinics in the western provinces.
Federally delivered health care services are under-reported. Several federal government departments are responsible for health care delivery to specific groups of Canadians. Despite being the fifth largest provider of health care in the country, the federal government provides limited information about this.
The annual report on the Canada Health Act fails to mention how federally delivered programs adhere to the Canada Health Act. Furthermore, the recent report on health indicators provided limited information on first nations health because of insufficient data.
Health Canada seems to have a culture of secrecy. Vital health information is often kept from the public. For example, reports have shown that the department knew of health risks posed by certain drugs, including Vioxx, but did not act upon this information. The entire drug approval process has since been revealed as biased toward pharmaceutical companies. Vioxx received fast track approval, which can be beneficial, but still, due to the cloak of secrecy and lack of transparency, it is not clear what the process was in these cases.
At a recent health committee meeting, a Health Canada official revealed that in the late 1970s the department did not reveal known dangerous effects of smoking, despite public interest in such information. Has anything changed since then? We do not know, but probably unfortunately not.
Medical errors cause the death of 24,000 Canadians each year. There are methods to help address this, again, things like Infoway, but the government seems to continuously fail to address the issues of transparency and accountability and refuses to allow the Auditor General to audit these foundations so that taxpayers can have assurances that they are getting value for their money.
To sum up, let me say that the budget may commit the government to reinvesting some of the money it stole from the system a decade ago. I am hopeful that it is not too late for the funding to have an effect.
Despite the money, I remain skeptical that the Liberals are truly committed to improving the system so that all Canadians can have access to the best possible health care. The glaring omissions in this budget indicate contempt toward some of those who are most in need.
Besides, the systemic lack of accountability, which the Liberals aid and abet to hide their mismanagement and ineptitude, leaves me with little faith that the money the budget committed to health will actually be well spent. Rest assured the Conservatives will be watching closely.
I would also like to point out that the Conservative platform in the last election was much more realistic and much more transparent. We estimated accurately the revenues coming into the government and we were able to make public policy decisions based on that information.
That is how our platform rolled out. The Liberals criticized it, but history has shown that the Conservatives were right and the Liberals were wrong. Is that not the truth? It happens time and time again that Conservatives are right and Liberals are wrong and it has happened on this budget as well.