Madam Speaker, I asked a question some time ago and today, on Lou Gehrig Day, I want to share my discontent with the answer I received.
I owe my life to our public health care system. I simply would not be here today without it, so, like most Canadians, I cherish our public health care system. It is a system that is based on the principle of “access to health services without financial or other barriers”. However, our system has massive holes in it, holes that belie the principle, holes that force Canadians to choose between their health and their other basic needs.
It is time to fix the holes in our health care system. It is time to live up to the promise of access without financial barriers. It is time for a national pharmacare program so no Canadian should have to face the impossible choice between paying for groceries and filling a prescription, and yet that is exactly what happens for one in five families in Canada.
In my riding of Edmonton Strathcona, I listened to a woman describe cutting her pills in half, hoping for relief while hanging on to the few remaining pills she has left until the end of the month. One senior told me how she is sharing her medication with her husband, two trying to get by on the medicine for one. A young man in my riding urged me to get pharmacare passed, not because he needed prescription drug coverage for his own family, but because his daughter's friend was going without her medication due to cost. Too many Canadians know exactly what I am talking about, and when COVID-19 hit, even more became aware. Millions of Canadians who lost their employment also lost their prescription drug coverage, at least temporarily. They suddenly got a glimpse of what their neighbours experience on a daily basis. Our eyes are open. We know now how vulnerable we really are.
Canadians have been waiting nearly 60 years to get prescription medications included in our health care system. Twenty-three years ago, the Liberals first promised Canadians a national pharmacare program, and they have been repeating that promise ever since. We have had five public commissions on pharmacare, study after study, including the Liberals' own Hoskins report in 2019, all saying the same thing: Canadians need pharmacare and pharmacare will save Canadians money. I do not know what is more disappointing, 23 years of broken promises or the stubborn refusal to even acknowledge the reality of so many Canadians.
The Conservatives' position on pharmacare is one of the most cynical things I have ever heard. The Conservatives have said in this House that 98% of Canadians already have access to prescription drug coverage, so we do not need pharmacare, but what they are really saying is that 2% of Canadians live with pre-existing conditions that make them uninsurable, and everyone else who does not have a drug plan should just go out and buy one from a private insurance company. I have news for the Conservatives. The seven million Canadians who cannot afford to pay for their medications cannot afford to pay for private insurance either. Telling these Canadians that they have access to medications is a slap in the face. I mean, we all have access to a Lamborghini, right?
The cynical nonsense has to stop. In February, this House debated Bill C-213, sponsored by the NDP member for New Westminster—Burnaby, which would have created a national pharmacare act. In a survey conducted by the Angus Reid Institute, nearly nine in 10 Canadians support a national pharmacare program. Only big pharma and the insurance industry are opposed, and yet the government joined with the Conservatives to vote this bill down.
Canadians are done with excuses. The time is up. Canadians want and deserve a national universal pharmacare plan now.