The member heckles me and laughs at me right now from down at the far end.
Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for my colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby, and he is a fellow British Columbian. We have worked collaboratively before.
At every step of the way, we introduced common-sense amendments. If I may, I will read into the record snippets of a few: “universal, in respect of pharmacare, means providing uniform coverage to all residents of all provinces and territories, including Indigenous peoples.” That was one that was voted down by the Liberal-NDP coalition.
Another amendment was this: “payments to the province or territory in order to provide, to Canadians without access to any other prescription drug coverage plan, public pharmacare coverage for or to increase any existing public pharmacare coverage for and to provide universal, single-payer, first-dollar coverage for”. Does that sound like Conservatives are trying to block this piece of legislation? It does not. How about this? This one is very straightforward: “make progress on providing universal coverage of pharmaceutical”.
I offer that to the House because, at every step of the way and throughout the next couple of hours of this debate, we will hear interventions from our Liberal colleagues and our NDP colleagues that will say that Conservatives tried to block this piece of legislation every step of the way.
Those of us who have been tasked, on this side of the House, to work collaboratively with the other side in the health committee worked diligently to try to come up with an actual piece of legislation that was accurate and that provided the necessary tools and meat for such an important topic. We were shut down at every step of the way, primarily by our colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby, who was doing yeoman service for his Liberal coalition on the other side, as most of them sat silent.
I want to remind the House as well that all provinces have their own type of pharmacare and that 97.2% of Canadians have some form of coverage. This is a $2-billion cost, a program cost. Surely, for the one million or 1.1 million Canadians who are without coverage, we could have found a different way of doing this, a better way of doing this, that would not have put in jeopardy the plans that 27 million other Canadians have. We have spoken with insurers. We have spoken with businesses that offer private insurance to their employees, and they have questions: Who is going to pay? What happens to their employees? What happens to those who are insured by them? Insurers have concerns. Canadians have concerns.
Moreover, I will offer this. In last night's committee of the whole debate, a lot was said about this plan being universal pharmacare. We know that we have constituents who are phoning and saying that they are going to the pharmacy today and asking if they can get their medications paid for. The reality is this: No, they cannot.
This was confirmed by the Minister of Health last night when I asked him if Bill C-64 provides any government funding for those struggling or inflicted with cardiac issues. The answer was no. Does Bill C-64 provide any funding for those with ALS? The answer was no. Does Bill C-64 provide any government funding for those who are struggling with asthma? It does not. Does Bill C-64 provide any funding for any medications other than contraception or diabetes? His answer was no, that it does not.
This is not universal pharmacare. It provides the necessary and very important medications for those struggling or living with diabetes and it provides contraception. It does not offer what it is being billed as. That is exactly what we are telling the government.
Tell Canadians exactly what it is. Let us be honest with Canadians. This is not universal pharmacare. That is where we have problems with this bill.