Mr. Speaker, on September 26, I asked the Minister of Health to explain why the federal government intended to move ahead with the $36 billion in cuts imposed by Stephen Harper.
Two days later, on September 28, the Minister of Health officially announced that the health transfer increases would be cut by half from 6% to 3% a year. The Liberals unilaterally decided to cut the health transfer increases.
The government is applying the cuts proposed by the Conservatives. It likely does not realize that, by so doing, it is jeopardizing the future of the provinces' health care systems.
What is more, it is people who are sick who are going to pay for the government's decision to slash health transfers. After promising Canadians that they would invest billions of dollars in health care, the Liberals are instead moving forward with the Conservative cuts and imposing conditions on the health transfers. The health care system will lose $1.1 billion in the first year alone and $36 billion in the long term as a result of this decision. We call that a broken promise.
Let us not forget that, during the election campaign, the Prime Minister sent the following message to his Quebec counterpart, the Premier of Quebec:
Unlike Mr. Harper, I do not intend to deal with [transfers] unilaterally. My party is aware of the challenges that increasing health care costs...represent....
I get the impression that this government does not really understand the impact of these cuts. I will explain that impact. The cuts mean longer wait times, fewer doctors and fewer nurses for people. They will open the door to powerful interests that want to privatize Canada's health care system. Let us not forget that the federal government covers only 20% of health care spending, and that percentage is declining.
The quality of health care that Canadian families receive should not be determined by how much money they make. That is one of our values, but it is under threat. In Quebec alone, health care costs are growing by about 5% per year. Rising costs will outpace federal transfers.
This fiscal imbalance prompted the parliamentary budget officer to paint a worrisome picture of public finances in his work on Quebec. He found that reduced federal transfers, mainly health transfers, would make the provinces non-viable, or in other words, bankrupt.
The federal government cannot continue to ignore this issue considering our aging population and the two major challenges facing the provinces when it comes to health: developing home support services and providing better mental health care.
Furthermore, the provinces expect Canada's aging population to be taken into account in the calculation of the transfer amount and they all agree on that. This is not a partisan issue; it concerns the health care provided to all Canadians.
In closing, the NDP is calling on the government to not adopt the cuts Stephen Harper had planned for this year and to negotiate in good faith with the provinces.
Can the government commit to that?