Madam Speaker, Liberals like to wrap themselves in the Canadian flag and proclaim themselves the great deliverers of health care in our country. It gets better. Allow me to read from former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin's 2004 election platform, which he infamously called a “fix for a generation”: “The priorities of a Liberal government begin with publicly funded, universally available health care. There is simply no other issue of such vital significance to Canadians. Liberals are proud of their founding role in making medicare a national priority.”
That sounded pretty good. It continues on, stating, “The objective of a Liberal government will be to agree with provinces and territories on a national pharmaceuticals strategy by 2006.” I would say that was a fail. That was former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin's 2004 election platform: a “fix for a generation”. Needless to say, national pharmacare did not happen in 2006. In fact, it is a full 20 years, a full generation, later, and we have a health care system that has fallen apart under the current NDP-Liberal government in Ottawa. Having broken our publicly accessible universal primary care system, we now have a Liberal Prime Minister who is setting his eyes on taking a wrecking ball to yet another part of our health care system. Why? In this backward town we call Ottawa, where common sense goes to die, Liberal logic says that if it is not broken, they need to break it.
What are the NDP-Liberals breaking today? It is the systematic dismantling of Canadians' access to their prescription drugs and treatments that are vital to their health. Just like 20 years ago, when that former Liberal prime minister brought disaster after disaster to primary health care, breaking it for a generation, if we follow our current NDP-Liberal Prime Minister down this path, our prescription drug system will forever be broken for generations to come. Rather than calling this a “fix for a generation”, I would say the fix is in.
It is against this backdrop of our broken primary health care system that Canadians need to take a good, hard look at this legislation. Bill C-64, the so-called pharmacare bill in front of us today, is not what the NDP or the Liberals are advertising. It is neither the implementation of universal prescription drug coverage, nor will it improve the options for the two items it promises to cover: contraception and diabetes medications. Instead, it goes out of its way to destroy Canadians' already pre-existing insurance coverage, provincial drug plans and freedom of choice in medication when pursuing treatments.
First, let us talk about federal-provincial relations. It is interventionist NDP-Liberal governments that use their control over the purse strings to force provinces into impossible decisions on patient care. Every time a premier tries to improve health care in their jurisdiction, the Liberal Prime Minister of the day will threaten to cut off health care funding to the province. Let us say a province wants to establish a few clinics offering MRIs outside of a hospital. To the Liberals, this is a mortal sin, and it cannot be allowed.
Earlier this year, the federal Liberal Minister of Health fined my home province of Saskatchewan $1 million for allowing MRI clinics to operate in 2021. This was an innovative idea that increased the number of MRIs performed at a lower cost. It was brilliant, but not so fast. The NDP-Liberal government saw that as a mortal threat and fined the province. As these clinics are still functioning because they are common sense, we can expect the fines to continue. How ridiculous is that? The answer is as simple as it is sad. They actually do not want the system to get better. They do not want better outcomes for people. The NDP and the Liberals learned long ago that as long as the health care system is broken, they can campaign in elections as the great protectors and saviours of the system. Canadians are not going to fall for that again. Remember, this whole thing depends on the federal government convincing the provinces to go along with this scheme, something we already know the Liberals are not good at doing.
Is this bill not doing something good? There is a second important thing to understand. This so-called pharmacare legislation will not bring universal prescription drug coverage to Canadians. Subsection 8(2) of the legislation, Bill C-64, under the heading “Discussions” says:
The Minister must...initiate discussions...with the aim of continuing to work toward the implementation of national universal pharmacare.
Let us break that down. What does the legislation require the minister to do? He must initiate discussions. That is fair enough. What do those discussions do? They have the aim of continuing to work towards a goal. Is that the big reveal? The minister is required to talk to some people to work towards an ideal. That sounds like every scam artist running a Ponzi scheme. Schmooze as many people as possible, and sell them on an idea that is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. This legislation is literally that: smoke and mirrors, conning Canadians into thinking there is a pot of prescription drug gold at the end of the rainbow.
It is not prescription drug gold at the end of this legislation. In fact, every single Canadian would be just that much poorer if and when this gets implemented because it is a direct attack on Canadians' private health insurance and drug coverage. Did members know that, according to The Globe and Mail, there are 102 government drug programs operating today, along with 113,000 private insurance programs? Statistics Canada reports that 79% of Canadians currently have health insurance that includes drug coverage.
The completely independent Parliamentary Budget Officer analyzed how much it would cost Canadian taxpayers if universal pharmacare were implemented. Their analysis is that pharmacare would cost about $40 billion every year. More importantly, that would be about $13 billion more than is being spent today. Let us keep in mind that pharmacare would replace existing public and private drug plans. Generally, private health care plans have better coverage than public ones. That would leave most people worse off. Therefore, overnight, four out of five Canadians would lose the prescription drug coverage they have through their employer, union, school, spouse, parent or provincial government plan.
The federal government is paying for it, which means we are paying for it through increased taxes. Either way we look at this, it would result in a multi-billion dollar spending increase paid for by us. Those who would really benefit from this are private companies who provide insurance to their employees because today the companies are paying for private drug insurance. Once this program kicks in, they could cancel those programs because the government would be paying for it. That would save those companies significant dollars. Essentially, it would be a transfer of dollars from the federal government directly to those companies, which is paid for by us.
Of course, the NDP-Liberals always love increasing taxes on unsuspecting Canadians. The other thing they love doing is limiting our choices to fit their narrow world view. There are two classes of drugs that the NDP-Liberals choose to cover in this so-called pharmacare bill: contraception and diabetes medications.
Let us talk about diabetes. Most people know that insulin is a shot given to diabetics to control their blood sugar levels, as needed. However, do people know that metformin is a prescription diabetes pill that is taken once or twice daily to help the body control its blood sugar properly, reducing the need for insulin? Do people know that metformin is prescribed commonly as a treatment for people before they have diabetes? With a daily treatment of metformin, that person may never develop diabetes, and that daily metformin is a dirt-cheap alternative to very expensive insulin. It keeps pre-diabetics from developing the disease, and it costs pennies, compared to insulin. Metformin is not covered.
What about Ozempic? We have all heard of Ozempic as the wonder weight-loss drug, but that is simply a side effect of being a diabetes drug that acts on the pancreas to control blood sugar. We also know that the best way to avoid type 2 diabetes is to be a healthy weight and to not be obese. Ozempic does that, but Ozempic is among the most expensive drugs on the market at about $75 a dose. Ozempic and metformin are used to prevent the disease of diabetes. Does that mean the NDP-Liberals are purposely going to deny treatment to those folks to prevent them from developing diabetes and are going to wait until they get the full-blown disease? How is that fair? Should that not be a decision for the patient and the doctor, and not for some bureaucrat in Ottawa?
Innovative Medicines did a comparison of the access of drugs covered by private insurance versus those in public plans. The results are as shocking as they are sad. In Canada, private insurance covers twice as many drugs as provincial plans do. The bottom line is that this bill, Bill C-64, proposes to take away people's private drug plan. That is what single-payer means. The result is that private companies and anyone else currently providing drug coverage in a benefit plan would cancel those plans and would force Canadians onto the government plan. Canadians would be stuck with a slimmed-down plan and would be forced to pay out-of-pocket for the rest.
After nine years, it is clear that this NDP-Liberal government simply is not worth the cost to Canadians' health. It has broken our primary health care system, and now with this so-called pharmacare legislation, it is setting out to break prescription drug coverage for 80% of Canadians who already have private insurance.
Conservatives will not stand idly by while the NDP-Liberals systematically break our country. If we form government, we would undertake the task to fix the immense damage this costly coalition has done. We would axe the tax. We would build the homes. We would fix the budget, and we would stop the crime. Let us bring it home.
