Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Red Deer.
It gives me pleasure to rise today and speak to this Reform Party motion. I congratulate the member for Calgary—Nose Hill for her hard work on this file and for bringing it to the attention of the House.
I will first speak about the need for increased health and social transfers to the provinces. Our health care system is on life support. Every day we hear more stories of patients waiting for days in clogged emergency rooms, nurses at the breaking point and physicians burned out trying to meet the needs of their patients and ever lengthening waiting lists. At the centre of all this is a person who falls ill and pays for the decay in our system with their pain and their suffering.
When the Liberal government assumed power in 1993 it promised to maintain a high level of health care spending for all Canadians. However, the reality is quite different. Since it came to power, the CHS transfer has dropped 28%, ripping a cumulative $21 billion out of transfer payments to the provinces. This slash and burn approach has left a devastated health care system in its wake.
The Canada Health Act, which has five principles that govern health care in Canada, is being violated every day across the country. However, every time someone tries to point out this painfully obvious fact, and I say painfully because people are suffering and even dying because of these failures, they are immediately labelled as an enemy of medicare. Immediately hot button words like two tier and American style are thrown out with no regard to the merit of the argument.
The government likes to wrap itself in the act, claiming to be the white knight of medicare, defending the health of Canadians despite the fact that the act is no longer capable of doing what it was originally intended to do.
The first principle, portability, implies that when citizens travel from one province to the other they will be covered in the same manner as in their home province. This is not true, as each province covers different services.
The second principle, that of public administration, states that the health care system will be publicly funded and administered. The fact is that while the feds and the provinces initially split the bill for health care equally, today the federal government contributes only 11% of the total in health care spending.
The third principle, universality, which means that everybody is covered for health care needs, is simply untrue. Those who cannot pay their premiums are not covered. Those who cannot afford fees for physiotherapy, chiropractic work, prosthesis and other services do without.
The fourth principle, accessibility, which means that an ill person receives care when they need it, is the most important principle of the Canada Health Act that is being violated. Last year 212,000 people were on waiting lists, an increase of 13% from the year before. Compounding this is the fact that people are waiting longer. The government is rationing people's health care and under these circumstances it is the poor and middle class who are getting their health care withheld, for the rich can always go south of the border, or often have connections to jump the queue.
The fifth principle, comprehensiveness, means that necessary services must be covered. However, this is not true considering that home care, many drugs, optical and dental services and many others are not completely covered.
Despite these obvious flaws in our health care system, we have a government that champions the status quo, a position that has taken us into this crisis and one that offers no way out. Throwing more money at a broken system does not help. The extra $2.5 billion that was announced in the 2000 budget, money that will be allocated in the next four years, is like offering a band-aid to a trauma victim. It will not get the job done. What we need is a fundamental shift in how we approach health care in the 21st century. While that shift is being created, we need to maintain what we have and the money that is being put forward is not doing the job.
It is against this backdrop of crumbling federal support for health care that Canadians are learning about the disastrous mismanagement of hundreds of millions of tax dollars in the human resources development department.
On January 19, 2000 an audit was released entitled “Program Integrity: Grants and Contributions” two days after a Reform Party access to information request for the audit was submitted. That audit revealed the following: Of the 459 project files reviewed, 15% did not have an application on file from the sponsor. On the remaining applications the following elements were missing: 72% had no cashflow forecast; 46% had no estimate of the number of participants; 25% had no description of the activities to be supported; 25% provided no description at all of the characteristics of the participants; 11% had no budget proposal; 11% had no description of expected results; and 97% of all files reviewed showed no evidence that anyone had checked to see if the recipient already owed money to HRDC. Eight out of 10 files reviewed did not show evidence of financial monitoring and 87% of project files showed no evidence of supervision.
Here are some examples of where the money went. Videotron Telecom of Montreal is worth $6 billion but received $2.5 million from the transitional jobs fund grant a month after the 1997 election. At the end of its contract, it had not claimed $550,000 of the money so HRDC simply sent them a cheque.
American based RMH Teleservices was enticed to the minister's riding using $1.6 million in HRDC grants over the protests of the neighbouring Liberal ridings. Later, RMH executive vice-president, Michael Sharff, said in an interview that they would have located there without it. He said “I'm sure we would be in Brantford one way or another. That was kind of like icing on the cake”.
The Canadian Aerospace Group in Nipissing, Ontario, received $917,000 of a $1.3 million TJF grant before going bankrupt without building any aircraft. Then the company moved to St. Hubert, Quebec, and was approved for another $1.65 million loan from Quebec's Federal Regional Development Agency, Canada economic development for Quebec regions. No money has been paid yet. The RCMP is investigating. The list goes on.
What is there to show for it? At least 19 police investigations, those we know about, a handful of jobs and a fountain in the Prime Minister's riding. Incidentally that riding received more grant money than the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba. Sadly the Prime Minister sees nothing wrong with them, saying that he is only doing his job as a good MP, despite the fact that three of the RCMP investigations are in his riding. I am sure it is no coincidence that many of the beneficiaries of this largesse are also generous contributors to the Liberal Party.
The official opposition believes that Canadians would rather see this money spent on improving the quality of health care than on lining the pockets of the Prime Minister's friends. That is why we are calling on the government to forgo the $1.5 billion increase contained in this year's budget for federal grants and contributions. We believe that this funding is better spent upgrading the quality of health care. We are deeply concerned about the future of health care in Canada. No one wants to see people suffer when they fall ill. No one wants an American style health care system in Canada.
We believe that health care should not be based on financial status. All Canadians should have timely access to essential health care services. When we form the government we will provide greater freedom of choice when it comes to ensuring their well-being and their access to the best medical care and facilities. We believe the needs of patients must come first in the delivery of health services. We will work co-operatively with the provinces so that they have the resources and flexibility to find more effective approaches to the financing, management and delivery of health care, thereby ensuring that the choice of patients in quality of care is maximized.
We can no longer afford to be complacent. We must find the best solutions and implement them. Time is of the essence. The longer we delay, the more people will suffer. Good solutions exist. All we need is the courage to implement them.
