Mr. Speaker, Albertans are tired. They are tired of hearing talking points while their public health care system collapses around them.
I asked the minister whether she is deliberately allowing public health care to erode or whether she simply does not care enough to protect it. What I got in response was another vague non-answer and more platitudes about working with provincial partners. Meanwhile, in Alberta, people are dying as they wait for care. That is not figurative or rhetorical; it is literal. Emergency room doctors in my province are warning that preventable deaths are happening because emergency rooms are overcrowded, understaffed and overwhelmed.
Seventeen rural emergency rooms are closed today because there are not enough health care workers. Patients are being treated in hallways and storage closets. Nearly one in five Albertans leaves the emergency room without receiving care, because the wait times are so unbearable.
While all of this is happening, Danielle Smith is openly dismantling public health care. She passed Bill 11, introducing two-tiered health care into Alberta for the first time in Canadian history. She is allowing doctors to charge patients privately while still billing the public system. She is diverting public money and health care workers away from the public system, and the public wait-lists grow longer. This violates the spirit and the principles of the Canada Health Act, in terms of universality, accessibility and equal care based on need, not on wealth.
While I am not surprised to see this Conservative government attack health care, the silence and the complicity of the Liberal government in the face of the breaking of the Canada Health Act is shocking. We watch the Liberal government, and every single time a corporation comes knocking, it opens the doors. However, when it comes time to protect our public institutions, we hear nothing.
I am very curious about whether health care is being quietly put on the block in negotiations such as CUSMA and other trade agreements, in which corporate access and investor protections are treated as untouchable but public services are treated as bargaining chips. How far is this government willing to go to accommodate corporate interests, even if it means weakening something that Canadians fundamentally believe in and fundamentally require?
The minister says she supports the Canada Health Act, but support without enforcement is meaningless. If the federal government refuses to act while a province openly builds a two-tiered health care system, then what exactly is the Canada Health Act for? Right now, Albertans are watching the slow Americanization of our health care. People with money move to the front of the line, and everyone else waits longer. This is not Canadian health care, and Canadians know it.
The federal government cannot keep hiding behind scripted talking points. Albertans deserve answers. When will the government enforce the Canada Health Act?