Madam Speaker, it is with pleasure that I am afforded the opportunity to speak today on this important piece of legislation.
Allow me to start off by talking about how the government has made the determination to incorporate within the budget debate massive amounts of legislation that should be stand-alone legislation. I say that because Canadians need to be aware that the government is using the back door of budget debate to bring into effect legislative changes that will have a profound impact on issues like our environment. This is, indeed, unprecedented and we need to hold the government accountable for a wide variety of issues.
Today, we are talking about the budget bill. We should actually be talking about budget expenditures. There are many things we could be talking about with regard to the budget, but the government brought in other issues and incorporated them into this budget debate, which I would argue is ultimately undemocratic. This majority mentality of the Conservative government has absolutely no respect for the proper procedures that must be followed to ensure there is some sense of due diligence with regard to legislation.
If the government wants to do Canadians a service, one thing it should do today is send a very clear message that it did make a mistake and it is going to take out the substantial pieces of legislation that it was going to try to sneak through by putting them in this budget debate.
Let me put it in perspective. In this budget debate, we are going to be talking about passing legislation that should have been brought in as separate pieces of legislation, bills that will have profound impacts on the environment, as I say. Also, the government has said that not only is it going to bring in all the other legislation through the budget debate but it is also putting limitations on how many days members are going to be able to speak on the bill. It is sneaking legislation in through the back door of the budget and then putting a limit on how long individual members of Parliament are going to be able to contribute to that debate.
I suggest that if Canadians only knew how the majority government has been behaving since it was awarded the majority, there is no way Canadians would ever give the government another majority. Time will go by relatively quickly, there will be another election and Canadians will be reminded of the attitude and arrogance of the government in dealing with legislation and changing the laws of Canada. Members need to highlight that.
As I say, there are other things. We are supposed to be debating a budget bill and yet there is a great deal of frustration in terms of the impact that this legislation is going to have on the environment, for which there should have been separate bills that would then have been debated in the House and sent to committee, where witnesses from across Canada would participate on the environmental changes, for example, that this bill would put into place. I say shame on the government for not doing the right thing and introducing separate legislation.
Let me talk about the budget. Canadians from coast to coast were upset when the Prime Minister, from overseas, made his decision that he wants to change our seniors pension programs. There were tens of thousands of seniors and others across this land who signed petitions, emailed, telephoned, made presentations to individual members of Parliament and, I suspect, wrote to the government, who all said what the government was doing was wrong with regard to the whole pension issue.
Canadians appreciate and feel passionate about the OAS, our CPP and our guaranteed income supplement. Those are the foundations of our pension programs, and I must say these are foundations that were set many years ago from Liberal administrations. However, that aside, I can tell members there are many Canadians who are very suspicious of the current government when it comes to those fundamental social programs that help identify us as Canadians, that help provide support for our seniors in their retirement years. The backlash was significant.
I believe that ultimately because of that backlash the government did back down on a number of initiatives it was going to take against our senior population here, to the degree that the Conservatives are ultimately pushing one, and there is no backing down on that one. That is, they are going to increase the retirement age from 65 to 67.
We within the Liberal Party have come out against that policy announcement. In fact, the Liberal Party is committed to reversing that position, because we believe Canadians should have the ability to determine whether or not they want to retire at age 65, and postponing it to age 67 is just wrong. It is not an issue of a crisis situation as the government tries to imply. We know that the Government of Canada, not only today but well into the future, can afford to provide those types of pension programs for our seniors and as people approach the age of 65.
Those are the types of issues that are important to Canadians. Those are the types of issues we need to be talking about during the budget debate.
Another important issue for people, not only of Winnipeg North but I would ultimately argue for all Canadians, is the issue of health care. The government has turned a deaf ear to the needs of health care across this country. We have waiting lists for emergency services. When I say waiting lists, I mean we have people who are still in hallways, waiting to be admitted into emergency services.
A couple of years ago, we had someone who was sitting in emergency in a tertiary health care facility, that is, the number one hospital facility in the province of Manitoba. That person sat in a chair for more than 30 hours, and for a good part of that 30 hours the individual had already passed away. Unfortunately, had that individual been given the attention he needed, he would have been alive today. I am not saying it is because of the current government that the individual passed away; there is a lot of shared responsibility there.
However, I will suggest that health care is a critically important issue that Canadians want their federal government to address. They expect the federal government to play a leadership role in providing adequate health care and ensuring there is going to be a healthy health care system for the generations to come.
Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien established the health care accord, which guaranteed a base funding level of health and that the base funding of health care would increase. That is important. Let us take the issue of health care dollars flowing to the provinces and look at the Canada Health Act, which was put into place by a Liberal administration but receives all-party support from what I understand. I believe all political parties today inside the House support the Canada Health Act.
However, let us take a look at the Canada Health Act and the money Ottawa transfers over to the provinces. Between those two, Ottawa does have a role to ensure we have health care standards from coast to coast, to ensure we have adequate health care services provided to all Canadians. I believe that the Conservative government has dropped the ball on the issue. It has turned a blind eye. This health care accord is expiring. The Conservatives have not had discussions or health care meetings to look at ways in which we can improve upon the need to renew the health care accord. There is a sunset to that health care accord.
Where is the leadership coming from Ottawa? There has been none. We need leadership. We need all political parties to get onside.
One of the New Democratic Party leadership candidates in Quebec talked about how the Province of Quebec should have the ability to administer health care and Ottawa should just hand over the money. I would suggest we need to have that debate, and the budget debate is a good place to have it.
Ottawa has the sole responsibility to ensure that there is a national standard, that there is a national program—