Madam Speaker, I feel so sorry for my friend, who was trotted out like a slaughtered lamb for this speech. To give a speech about health care and being a New Democrat is ludicrous in my province.
New Democrats actually ushered in the two-tiered health care system under Roy Romanow when they closed 52 hospitals in my province, and every hospital they closed was in an opposition member's riding. They fired 1,000 nurses and 500 doctors in the 1990s. Therefore, when they talk about two-tiered health care in Canada, they are the ones who brought it in. People could never get the same service in rural and remote Saskatchewan as they could in urban Saskatchewan. They closed the Plains hospital, which was one of the first hospitals built in the province in 100 years. They did not like the people who were going to it because those people did not vote NDP.
The NDP has nothing to stand on when it comes to two-tiered health care in my province. They eviscerated Saskatchewan's health care system. That is why they will never be in government in Saskatchewan and why they will never be trusted to be the government of Canada.