Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express the disappointment of my constituents and Canadians everywhere with this federal budget. It was a budget of profound disappointment for Canadians, particularly on the health care front. It was a budget that was greeted not only with disappointment, but with disbelief from Canadians who really believed that this government was prepared to deal with the critical health care situation in this country.
We have heard those sentiments expressed from all parts, all areas in this country. We have heard it from nurses. We have heard it from doctors. We have heard it from people in hospital hallways and many other Canadians. We have even heard it from the Minister of Health. Medicare is underfunded and people are suffering unnecessarily for it.
This budget offers no new money for medicare. We have heard time and again from Liberal members suggesting that the cancelled cut of $1.5 billion is new money.
Let us be clear, it is not. It goes no distance at all to reversing the $3.5 billion that this Liberal government took out of health care in 1995. There is no new money in this budget for health care. There is no federal leadership in this budget. There is no commitment to expanding on our medicare model by putting money toward home care in this budget.
It does not work for Canadians to continue to recycle old commitments and to transform foregone cuts as if they were new proposals and new initiatives. It does not work to continue to blame the problem on the provinces although it is quite obvious that one cannot ignore negative developments on the provincial front.
This afternoon I listened very carefully to comments by the member for Brandon—Souris who tried on the one hand to suggest that the federal government had made a terrible mistake in this budget with respect to health care and I agree with him on that point.
On the other hand he tried to suggest that the Conservative government in Manitoba had made brilliant decisions with respect to health care and done a great service to Canadians in that province. It makes no sense to on the one hand criticize the federal government and then to praise the Manitoba government for doing precisely what has been happening here federally.
On both counts we are dealing with governments which are so busy offloading and privatizing and deregulating in the area of health care that it is in fact the patients who are suffering and Canada's health care system that is in disarray.
It is true that there is no longer a fiscal deficit in this country, but what cannot be overlooked is that there is a profound human deficit. It is the result of another kind of deficit, a moral deficit on the part of this government.
The Liberal government does not want to reinvest in health care because it is afraid it will not get the credit for it as those funds are channelled through the provinces. People can literally suffer, even die, because the Liberals may not get the credit they and only they feel they deserve.
Another offensive argument that is being used by the government to justify their continued squeeze on the health care system is that if they give the provinces money, it may not be used for health care because we have a block transfer system for health and social services.
Let us not forget who established this block transfer system. It was the Liberals and now the same Liberals are using it as a convenient excuse to starve medicare out of the billions of dollars it took out of it.
In these difficult times it is important to acknowledge how Canadians are struggling and trying to cope in the face of these continued and demoralizing cuts. The media have also played a role in bringing these stories to the public's attention; painful, personal stories about waiting for hours in an emergency ward before receiving any treatment, stories about nurses working 24 hour shifts and collapsing from exhaustion.
When the Liberals patted themselves on the back for this budget, Canadians did not let them forget the terrible cost. We once had one of the finest health care systems in the world. For decades our health care system provided efficient, good quality service for all Canadians. Now, because of successive Conservative and Liberal cutbacks, we are left with a system practically in chaos in which people can no longer count on timely treatment.
The solution is clear. A reinvestment in medicare is absolutely imperative. Let us not turn to a private system in which the rich go to the front of the line and low and middle income people suffer and die on long waiting lists. Let us reinvest in medicare so every Canadian has access to timely, good quality health care.
On another matter, it is clear that there is a set of issues that have been certainly left off this agenda for a very long time.
It is hard to believe from the absence of discussion on child care, on women's health, on violence, that in 1984 there was actually an all party leaders' debate on women's issues.
Yet today many of the issues that are central to the lives of women, that are critical for the advancement of the goal of equality, have been forgotten, ignored, disregarded, and are invisible on the agenda and in the budget. Like pay equity, for example, the federal government continues to refuse to pay its own women workers what they are worth.
On another matter, we had hoped to see in the budget a restoration of funds to the women's program which has been cut back by millions of dollars over the years.
The fair share campaign is calling for the government to spend $2 for every woman and girl in Canada, on organizations and projects that bring women and men closer to social, economic and legal equality. Unfortunately the government and the Secretary of State for the Status of Women are silent on this matter in the budget.
The government has committed itself to analysing all policies and programs for any possible differential impact on women and men. It begs the question where that analysis is in the formulation of the budget. We want to know if this analysis was ever considered in terms of the budget decisions like the decision not to reverse the Liberal's $7 billion cut to health and social services.
Women, as we all know, make up the majority of workers in and users of health care and social services. These cuts clearly have a disproportionate affect on women.
In the budget child care expense deductions were raised. That is a good step, but where is the national child care program that was promised and promised until the Liberals were blue in the face? The 1993 red book promise of 150,000 new spaces is long forgotten. What good is a child care expense deduction by itself for those parents whose children have been waiting on lists for years?
I want it to be known that my colleagues in the NDP caucus, in particular the member for Vancouver East and the member for Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, have launched a national campaign for child care on behalf of NDP participation in the women's committee. We will do what we can to put pressure on the government.
There are many other issues to raise, but let me conclude by saying that I am certainly proud to represent the people of Winnipeg North Centre. It is a diverse riding made up of seniors, children, parents trying to make ends meet, people working in all sorts of jobs and professions, and people looking for work. What is in the budget for them? Not much.
The government plays with numbers. It sets targets for inflation. Why can it not set targets for employment, to get people into jobs? There is no new spending for youth employment. Less than half of one per cent of unemployed youth will get a job as a result of the budget.
The Liberal government now has the money to do something about health care and unemployment and chooses not to. That is the sad and unacceptable thing about the budget. The government had a wonderful opportunity to deal with both fiscal issues and the human deficit. It has missed this opportunity and left a terrible price for all Canadians to pay.
