Keith Martin

[Old Age Security Act, May 8th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak on this bill.

As our country moves into the 21st century, many significant changes are occurring, changes that are of great concern to the citizens of our country. First, the demographics are changing quite dramatically. We have an aging population. In twenty years there will be three to four workers for every retiree.

We are in a fiscal crisis. That crisis will only get worse. This government, as have preceding governments, has not had the courage to deal with that onerous problem, which seeks to sink the social programs that we have come to cherish in our country, social programs such as OAS, CPP, and UI. It is against this backdrop of crushing tax burdens to virtually every citizen that we see this bill come forth.

It is therefore with great consternation, justified as it is, that our people on social programs, the aged, the infirm, and the poor ponder their future, most of whom have indeed worked very hard to be the backbone of this country. We saw today many of

those members here who have fought and given their blood and their soul so that we may enjoy the freedom we have today in this the most beautiful country in the world. Some are well off but others, as I said before, just scrape by. This can similarly be said of our social programs, which are indeed scraping by also.

All the people we have spoken about who are relying on our social programs ask themselves if they will have enough to survive. This is indeed a common denominator, whether we are speaking of someone from British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, or New Brunswick.

Bill C-54, an act to amend OAS, CPP, the Children's Special Allowances Act, the UI act, and so on, is conspicuous not for what it does but for what it fails to do. It is an opportunity lost as we head into the era of the implosion of our social programs, for there are no great innovative ideas in this program.

What is required is to put forth social programs on firm fiscal footing. That is not what this bill does at all. Rather, it is window dressing. While it will save the taxpayers some $10 million, which is to be applauded, it does nothing when one looks at the overall spending of social programs of some $80 billion.

One of the great fallacies of Canadian politics is the myth that the Reform Party is against social programs and the poor. I recently had a conversation with a member of this House who said to me "You in the Reform Party are really not for the poor at all, are you?" Nothing can be further from the truth. In fact I say that we are the only political party in the House that wants to ensure that the poor and the needy are taken care of in this country. As I said before, the opposite is true, from the barbs we receive across the way.

Every other party engages in a fiscal program that, due to its inability to get government program spending under control, crushes the ability of the government to pay for the social programs it offers to the Canadian people in a mythological fashion.

Today government spending in general is about $120 billion. Because of the budget being put down now-and I do not lay the blame completely as the government's fault, because preceding governments have contributed significantly to it-what the Canadian public does not understand, and what has not been communicated adequately to it, is that in three years' time there will not be $120 billion to spend, but rather $102 billion. Where will the money be cut? Where will it be found? Those who will suffer are those who are poor. Those who are rich will not suffer because they have the money to take care of themselves. We in this party always attempt to be constructive, not merely obstructionist.

Let us take a look at the big picture to see exactly what we are looking at. Old age security costs us $14.4 billion every year and is rising because of the demographic changes which I previously mentioned. GIS costs us $4.3 billion and is rising. CPP costs us $13.2 billion and UI costs us $19.1 billion and is rising. It is impossible to pay for that.

Therefore we in this party have always been of the mindset, and we have put forth time and time again, that we need to target our social programs to those truly in need. What is so wrong with removing the social payments from those people who are in the upper third income bracket? If we explain to the Canadian public that the money it receives is borrowed from its children and grandchildren it will be very reasonable and understand the situation cannot continue.

It is an absolute affront to engage in the generational blunder that we continue to foist upon coming generations by giving them a burden of debt which will significantly contribute to the negative environment in which they will live in the future.

Another thing we in the Reform Party wish to do is focus on the family and allow the family to take care of itself. Families are better than any government at doing that.

I ask my constituents what the biggest problem they have right now is. They are burdened with an unwieldy tax. Tax crushes their ability to take care of themselves, their children and other family members, particularly when they are in need. We should allow family members to take care of themselves. If we manage to invoke a tax decrease for them, and there are many ways to do that, they will be empowered to take care of themselves and their families.

It is interesting to look back at the early 1990s. The government of the day reduced taxes. What happened? Government revenues increased. What happened after that? The government of the day started to tax wildly; an orgy of taxation which included the GST.

When I visit the business community virtually every business person I speak to will say remove the GST. It is an unwieldy system as it stands. That money has to be found somewhere else. We do not advocate it being removed, we are saying streamline the GST, lower it, simplify it and there will be an added benefit because so much of it goes to bureaucracy in trying to manage the unwieldy taxation we have. Taxation in general, as I previously stated, is so unwieldy it is crushing the ability of Canadians to take care of themselves.

I implore the hon. minister who is here today to go to the Canadian public again. He should not rely on bureaucracy, the people who appear in committee or in his office. I ask him to go to the Canadian people. He should walk out there to ask Canadians what their concerns are. He should ask them how we

can improve the current situation so that the poor people of Canada and those who are bereft of hope can be taken care of. I implore the minister to do that. I know members of my party would be more than happy to help him to that end.

[Conference On Tobacco Use, May 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Health's own department showed that consumption of tobacco is up by 20 per cent in Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick in the last 10 months. Yet our tobacco reduction strategy just mentioned by the hon. minister has been cut by 50 per cent. Why is the government spending $3 million abroad while our smoking problem in Canada gets progressively worse?

[Conference On Tobacco Use, May 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform the Minister of Health that she cannot suck and blow on her tobacco reduction strategy at the same time.

[Conference On Tobacco Use, May 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the government is sponsoring an anti-tobacco conference in none other than the beautiful Italian resort of Bellagio. Last week the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health said the government is not donating a single penny to this conference. Yet information shows that Health Canada is giving $900,000 and the International Development Research Centre, a crown corporation, is giving another $2 million of the taxpayers' money to fund this conference.

Who is correct, the IDRC and Health Canada or the parliamentary secretary to the minister of Health?

[Health, May 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the health care system in this country is now in serious crisis; five-month waits for heart surgery, thirteen-month waits for hip replacement, and increasing numbers of bed closures are now commonplace.

Every year tens of thousands of Canadians are shocked into reality when they find out timely and accessible health care is not available to them. The primary reason for this is there is not enough money to pay for the demands on our health care system.

The time for solutions is now, otherwise we will see the demise of publicly funded health care in Canada. Therefore we must define essential health care services and ensure that all Canadians are covered regardless of their financial status. We must amend the Canada Health Act to allow the provinces to work with different funding models. We must also ensure federal funds given to the provinces go to health care and are not siphoned off into other programs.

We must be innovative to work to ensure that high quality, accessible health care is available to all Canadians.

[Supply, April 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, we have been giving constructive solutions. At the end of my speech I stated that members of the Reform Party would be more than willing to help get the Canadian health care system back on its feet and to ensure that medicare is provided in a fiscally sustainable fashion in the future. Obviously somebody is not listening.

We talk about essential health care services and who is not getting them. I can give the House cases. I have just mentioned the three-week waiting list for urgent heart surgery in Alberta. If that is not an essential health care service and irresponsibility I do not know what it is. The physicians who are dealing with these patients-the member knows because she is a physician-would be more than happy to inform her that this is completely inadequate. This is not something happening only in Alberta but it is going on across the country. In Ottawa it is a five-month wait for open heart surgery and in B.C. it is a thirteen-month wait for people who are in severe pain.

What the member and the government have been saying is that the government will decide what the patient needs. The government will decide what the public can and cannot do with their health care system and for their health. How arrogant to do this when health care is that which is most important to all of our hearts. That is irresponsible.

I would be more than happy to provide a long list to the hon. member of situations that demonstrate the fact that our current medicare system is not working.

[Supply, April 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe the hon. member is saying what she is saying. I will repeat again, this is not rhetoric.

I just spent half of my speech giving the government constructive solutions on what to do. My colleagues, Dr. Hill and Mr. Manning have spent the last hour giving constructive solutions to the government.

[Supply, April 27th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, my colleagues will be dividing their time from now on.

It is with great sadness that I am here today to speak on the motion. It is with great sadness and anger that I listened to the response of the government to the most important thing in people's lives, their health.

The government continues to put forth the fantasy that medicare can continue in its current form. This is criminal, reprehensible and an outright lie. The reality is that medicare is like a ship with holes in it that is sinking with its captain, the government, saying all is well. Unfortunately when we look inside where the people are, the patients, we find that they are dying, suffering and in pain. That is exactly what is happening in health care in Canada today. It is a profound tragedy and should not occur in a country such as ours.

The provinces have found that demand is increasing. Costs are escalating with an aging population and more expensive technology. Also revenues are going down as was demonstrated in the last budget with an $8 billion decrease in transfer funding from the federal government.

Who is caught between a rock and a hard place? In reality it is the patients who are sick, who are unwell. When they go to hospital they discover that essential health care services cannot be provided in a reasonable amount of time.

The provinces are hamstrung by the current Canada Health Act. They are forced to engage in rationing. I will give some real life examples from across the country. In Victoria, B.C., where I live, 40 per cent of hip replacements for elderly people who are in severe pain take 13 months. The British Columbia Health Association is very concerned about the critical lack of access to essential services.

In Prince George a very interesting and sad thing happened. People going for surgery were given the option of receiving autologous blood transfusions, which allow people to have their own blood taken and purified for use in their next surgery. The cost charged to each patient was $150. The reason for that was the Red Cross and medicare system could not pay for it. They gave the patient the option of using their own blood in a safe fashion that would not subject them to HIV, hepatitis and a number of other diseases.

Two months after this came out the Ministry of Health said that it could not be done, that patients could not be charged for it. It prevented the Prince George Regional Hospital from doing so. Now patients have to get packed cells for blood transfusions at $500 a unit.

In Alberta it takes three weeks for emergent and urgent open heart surgery. The surgeons there say it is a miracle so far that nobody has died, but it is going to happen.

The Prince George hospital, because of the funding cutbacks that have been foisted upon the provincial government, is forced to cut back its operating room days by 12 days a year, knowing full well that it has hundreds of people waiting for urgent surgery.

The minister said that doctors were returning to Canada. I had a conversation with one of her close advisers the other day who said that it was the bad doctors who were leaving the country. He asked: "Isn't that so?" Half our neurosurgeons leave the country. Eighty per cent of orthopedic surgeons in some cities have left as well as 50 per cent of obstetricians and gynecologists.

Dr. Joel Cooper of the University of Toronto, a world famous cardio-thoracic surgeon, left. Dr. Munro from the Hospital for Sick Children left. These world famous individuals left the country not because they wanted more money but because, in their words, they could not practise the way they were supposed to and were sick and tired of having their patients suffer. That is not adequate health care.

The reality is that the population is increasing and costs are rising. The minister said that we do not have a two-tier system. What nonsense. A billion dollars every year goes to the United States. Why? It is because Canadians cannot obtain essential health care services in a timely fashion so they go to the states. Why do we not keep that money in Canada?

The minister said that private expenditures were increasing. Of course they are increasing. Why? It is because people will not wait for the current public system to provide their health care services. They do not want to be in pain and they do not want to die. The government is forbidding them from doing that and is not accepting the fact that it cannot provide essential services in a timely fashion. That is a travesty. It is also extremely arrogant for the government to tell the public that it is forbidden to do that. In effect the government is sacrificing people's health on the altar of a dead socialist ideology.

We must recognize the financial crisis of today and the decrease in funding. We must recognize that people cannot be taxed more and that demand is going up. We must recognize that the Canada Health Act is hopelessly obsolete and unable to provide the same health care services to all people all the time, especially essential health care services. Sick people are in effect dying.

We must move to a new era. We will present constructive alternatives. Let us make a new made in Canada health act. It should not be one from the United States or one from England but one from Canada. We do not want an American style system. There is no resemblance whatsoever in what we propose to the system south of the border.

First, we must get the federal government, the provinces and the people together to define essential health care services for which all people across the country will be covered regardless of income. We may want to look at the Oregon model to begin with.

Second, let us allow the provinces to experiment with alternative funding models, such as private clinics, private insurance and the like. Why? It is because the system needs more money to provide health care. It is true that it needs to be revamped, but it also needs more money to reflect our current fiscal crisis and fiscal crunch in health care.

This is not a threat to medicare, rather it will make it better. What is so wrong with enabling private clinics to provide private services in the private sector where only private dollars will be exchanged? It will not in any way affect the public system.

In fact the demand on the public system will go down so that those people who are in this system will be able to get essential health care services in a more timely fashion. Is it a two-tier system? Yes, but we have one now. Is it unequal? Yes, but it provides for better access for all people regardless of their income. It ensures quicker access to those essential services that Canadians are not receiving now.

It is time to move forward. It is time to move with courage. It is not the time to delve into a morass of ideology but open our eyes and work together. My colleagues and I are more than happy to work with the Minister of Health in the interests of the Canadian public and the health of Canadians, to develop a fair and equitable solution and to provide better health care for all now and in the future.

We are not the enemy. We are merely trying to ensure that we have an improved system from coast to coast. Let us set up those national standards. As individuals we are not going to do that here, nor should we. We cannot nor should we play God. This must come from members of the public. It must come from the provinces. It must come from health care professionals. It must come from the federal government.

Let us ensure that we have portability for these national standards, that we have comprehensive coverage for essential health care services for all people, that we have good public administration of essential health care services, that we have universal coverage for essential health care services for all Canadians.

Last, let us ensure that we have essential health care services provided in a timely fashion. The Canadian people are not receiving their essential services in a timely fashion. One only needs to go into the field, go into the hospitals, to see the people who are not receiving them. Morale is the lowest it has ever

been, as is the pain and suffering on people's faces when told they have to wait 13 months potentially for their hip replacement or three months for their urgent heart surgery. That is not good medicine. That is bad medicine.

[Supply, April 27th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, what does hon. member think about the recent comments of the British Columbia Health Association about being significantly concerned about access to essential health care services in British Columbia? This is not something occurring solely in British Columbia. As the member well knows, it is occurring across the country.

My party has proposed an alternative form of the Canada Health Act. We would allow the provinces to have such structures as private medical clinics. Not a dollar from Canadian taxpayers would go toward paying for it. Members of the public would have the choice to pay for the services, whatever they happen to be, in private clinics. We must bear in mind that the services would be offered to anybody in a public hospital or a clinic.

What is so wrong? How will private structures involving the exchange of private moneys impede the ability of the public sector to provide services? Also, why does the government have such an aversion to choice when we have choice in almost everything else in our lives?

[Tobacco Exports, April 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, calling a spade a spade, tobacco companies go overseas to find other markets to sell tobacco, not something else.

The Minister of Health has said in the House that she would do anything to prevent even one person from taking up smoking. As the minister knows, representatives of tobacco companies freely distribute their products to nightclubs overseas in an attempt to get young people addicted.

Does the Minister of Health support the practice of the government in aiding tobacco companies to promote smoking overseas?