Mr. Speaker, I would have liked to follow up on what my colleague of Châteauguay was saying, but we were somewhat interrupted by another debate. However, I would like to come back to the text of the motion proposed today. It says:
That this House acknowledge the existence of a fiscal imbalance—
It is quite obvious that our colleagues opposite do not want to acknowledge this fiscal imbalance, even though a few years ago at the premiers' meeting in Victoria, the veil had been lifted on this issue, even though the Romanow commission will certainly talk about a financial resource problem, about a lack of money, even though the Séguin commission, on which everyone in Quebec agreed, effectively acknowledged the existence of this imbalance, even though, at the Standing Committee on Finance the Canadian Medical Association came to tell us that there was a lack of money in health care and the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions came to tell us that they had difficulties, despite all this it would seem there is a lack of will somewhere.
Of course I understand that the government wants to toe the line drawn by the Minister of Finance because it is in the same party, but the fact remains that there is a fiscal imbalance and one must be right in the field to really know the extent of it.
I was president of a local community health centre in Quebec from 1990 up until very recently. I was also vice-president of a regional board. One must have experienced all the changes in the health system and have gone from door to door, including to the federal, to be told that there is no money and that no more will be added, to understand the scope and consequences of this fiscal imbalance. I would like to talk about the consequences of this imbalance.
There is a fiscal imbalance in Quebec as in other provinces. I had the opportunity to travel to different places where there are no local community health centres. In New Brunswick, for instance, there are community centres providing certain services and health care. In Ontario, particularly among French-speaking communities, people specifically complain about the lack of services and say they should normally have more, but there is not enough money. The same applies to Alberta, where there are problems at the regional level.
The result is that our needs are badly covered. There is a lack of services. How does this translate? Take geriatric medicine. We know that the population is aging. How can we ensure a minimum of care in geriatric medicine when we do not have the money? When we raise this with the federal government it tells us to discuss it with the provinces. The federal government is also responsible for these people as they age.
How can the federal government not be responsible for children with reduced motor skills? How can people with intellectual disabilities be overlooked? How is it we can ignore psychosocial needs? That is the problem right now.
I also experienced all of the transformations in the health care system. I was there in 1990. When the Liberal Party, the current federal government, came to power and decided to download its debt on the backs of the provinces it created a monumental mess where every province was forced to turn on a dime and do reorganize their own health care systems in turn. The provinces are under tremendous pressure now. There is no fat left to trim. They have done what they had to do.
What is happening is that the federal government continues to keep the money that it said it was going to give us. It was temporary, I remember.
In health, I remember that the federal Minister of Health visited the regional health services board in my community. The minister said “We are asking you to get things in order. We are asking you to clean up shop, but only for a few years, the time we need to get the healthcare system back in shape”.
We did get things in order, but the budgets never came and the promises were never fulfilled. It is not surprising. I think it is like the bridges that we were promised at one time.
In Quebec we tried, and we are still trying, to establish a health care system that cannot be found elsewhere, that does not exist in the other provinces. It is a system of integrated services where we call on the services of all of the stakeholders in the system together. These integrated service systems ensure cohesive services in prevention and health promotion. We need money for this. It takes money in order to promote health.
When looking again at the consequences of the fiscal imbalance, we can see that it leads to a loss of efficiency. In Quebec, we have had to send people out of province to get medical care. I think it has also happening in other provinces, but we do not hear about it because it is embarrassing. Proper care could not be provided to there individuals. We did not have the technology. I know it has happened in British Columbia and Manitoba, where people were quietly sent to the United States to get medical care. Quebec is not the only one talking about a fiscal imbalance, and it is not the only one experiencing problems with the health care system.
At one point, the government opposite introduced a policy to let people know how lucky we were to have volunteers in Canada. These are community groups that are often dirt poor, whose staff are paid hardly anything. They have a hard time making ends meet. Were it not for these community groups, and these volunteers trying to provide services, how would these services be provided? Directors of regional boards have to set priorities. Who should have priority? Young people? Women? The handicapped? The elderly? What is a regional board to do when it is $80 million short in its budget? And the situation is the same in all regional boards, whether in the Saguenay region or in any other region in Quebec.
Francophones in Ontario have difficulty obtaining services. That is still a very real problem.
I have nothing against paying part of the debt, but we cannot create a new debt in the process. Canadians and Quebecers must not lose services just because the debt has to be paid down. Prevention is part of health services, and it is something we have to work at every day. Therefore, we have to invest in it.
I hope the government will at least admit that there is a fiscal imbalance and put extra money into health services.
I also hope that Quebecers who saw tonight how the Bloc is fighting to get the money needed will remember that at the next federal elections. I certainly hope that they will elect people who will truly represent them and that they will consider the fact that the Quebec government has done its utmost, in health, to turn the situation around, despite the cuts imposed by the federal government.
