Madam Speaker, I thank the House for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the people of Souris—Moose Mountain, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to today's debate as we discuss Bill C-64, an act respecting pharmacare, and its amendment.
I think it is important to ensure that Canadians truly understand what the piece of legislation before us is and how it might affect them in the future. In fact if we read the amendment that has been put forward, we see that it states:
The House decline to give second reading to Bill C-64, An Act respecting pharmacare, since the Bill does nothing to address the health care crisis and will instead offer Canadians an inferior pharmacare plan that covers less, costs more and builds up a massive new bureaucracy that Canadians can't afford.
Unfortunately, much of what I am about to talk about in dealing with what the government has put forward is that we need to determine that it is going to be to the detriment of most Canadians, thanks to the NDP-Liberal government, which only continues to make life harder for those who are just trying to get by in difficult times like these. Bill C-64 is yet another example of an empty promise put forth by the Liberals in an attempt to please the NDP and maintain power in this country. There is virtually nothing for the vast majority of Canadians.
The document is a measly six pages long, much of which is preamble and definitions. I can almost guarantee that when Canadians were told that a pharmacare plan was coming, they were expecting a whole lot more than six pages that lack any of the necessary details like costs, timelines, formulary, which drugs are in and which drugs are out, and other relevant information. The reality is that the majority of Canadians, 79% of them, already have private health care insurance to cover their medications. Many of them are afraid of losing their plan.
The legislation, however, has become typical of the Liberal-NDP coalition government. Let us have a quote: “Bragging is not doing.” I wonder who said that. I will get back to it. After eight years of empty promises, brags, Canadians have lost trust in the so-called leadership of the Prime Minister. He promised affordable housing, yet housing costs has doubled across the country. Bragging is not doing; let us remember that.
The Prime Minister promised that the carbon tax would put more money in the pockets of taxpayers, yet 60% of Canadians are paying more because of that very tax. Bragging is not doing. In fact in 2019, his then environment minister promised Canadians that the carbon tax would not exceed $50 per tonne, stating that the price would not go up and that there is no secret agenda. However, after the election, the Liberals' hidden secret agenda came out, and the current carbon tax is at $80 per tonne and will be going up to a whopping $170 per tonne by 2030.
How are Canadians supposed to believe anything the government says when it breaks promise after promise, to the detriment of its own people? It does not take much to see that the sad little bill before us is simply a Liberal attempt to cater to the NDP, which has been propping the Liberals up and keeping them in power since the last election.
Since the pharmacare bill contains almost no details about how the program would actually work, I would like to touch on a similar plan that is about to be launched across Canada, more bragging, I hear. It is the Canadian dental care plan, which is set to start providing coverage. It is a great example of the Liberals' providing blatant misinformation to Canadians by omitting context.
They will tell us that the plan is a huge success because 1.6 million seniors have already signed up to participate. What they do not tell us is that Canada has only about 26,500 dentists practising in total, and fewer than 10% of them have enrolled in the new dental care plan, which also includes dental hygienists. There are eight dentists enrolled in New Brunswick. Ontario has 65 and Nova Scotia has six. P.E.I. has zero and Manitoba has seven. This is just to name a few of the provinces. Why is that? There is too much paperwork and signing of contracts, to name just some of their concerns.
Considering that Canada is already dealing with a massive shortage of doctors, the last thing taxpayers want to know and see, and have talked about many times, is the need to find yet another health care practitioner. That struggle is immense.
Another hugely alarming issue with the Canadian dental care plan that is also a major concern with pharmacare is the lack of consultation the government held with the important industry players. When it comes to the dental issue, the provincial associations stated that the federal Liberals started consulting them only in late November, just one month before the program was announced. One dentist stated that dentists were brought in at the eleventh hour. They asked why we started so late and whether we were rushing into a program that maybe we should be putting the brakes on.
Again, the lack of consultation has now become a hallmark of the NDP-Liberal government's agenda, as the Liberals also failed to consult with insurance industry stakeholders during the formulation of the pharmacare bill. If this is the Liberal track record on industry consultations that have the potential to greatly impact a key piece of legislation that would affect millions, then of course we need to be concerned that the same thing could happen with pharmacare.
Misinformation is also something that needs to be top of mind when dealing with the NDP-Liberal government. Initially, the government's dental care plan was pitched as being free, and yet now we know that is not so. The program covers only some types of dental care, and it does not adequately pay providers in line with the fees that are recommended by the provincial and territorial guidelines.
Will it be the same for pharmacare? One wonders. Canadians are going to be told not to worry, and then all of a sudden be required to pay for their medications despite the promises made by the government. Since the Liberals are completely inept at creating and implementing programs that actually work, this is unfortunately what Canadians have come to expect.
Since the pharmacare plan was first announced in February, physicians across the country have been vocal about the concerns they have with how the plan would actually work. Since the bill itself contains almost no information, there is worry that instead of filling the gaps left by public and private health care coverage, the bill could actually create more gaps, with more Canadians falling through the cracks.
There is also a lot of uncertainty over which drugs would make it onto the formulary. If there are extra steps involved in this, it would place an additional administrative burden on physicians, which is frankly the last thing Canada's health care system needs right now.
Furthermore, as we are all aware, wait times for health care in this country are longer than they ever have been. Currently, there is a median wait time of 27.7 weeks between getting a referral from a general practitioner and the receipt of treatment. This is an almost 200% increase in wait times since 1993.
We all know there are over six million Canadians without a family doctor, and we have overwhelmed emergency departments throughout Canada. Through ill-thought-out bills like the pharmacare one, the federal government would be burdening our physicians with even more paperwork and administration, instead of allowing them to provide the care that Canadians need. By increasing the administrative burden, there is also a concern that doctors, nurses and other health care providers would face greater instances of burnout, causing them to leave their professions altogether.
A very important part that the government continues to ignore is that the provision and administration of health care falls under provincial and territorial jurisdiction. It is not the job of the federal government to make decisions on issues like drug coverage, which the bill could certainly allow for. We need to respect the authority of the provinces and the territories to do what is best for their populations, as this is not a situation where Ottawa knows best.
One part of the bill that I personally take issue with is the fact that it would establish a committee of experts to make recommendations on pharmacare. The reason this concerns me is, yet again, the Liberals' track record when it comes to creating committees to create committees to create committees, ultimately doing nothing to address the issues they were created to address.
Ultimately, given that the pharmacare bill is so short on any details, we still do not know how big the committee would be and what the qualifications of the members would be. If the Liberals failed so drastically with something like just transition, which affected a small portion of Canada's population, how is anyone supposed to believe that they would handle this?
As an example, one year ago the Liberals pledged $1.4 billion for drugs for rare diseases, yet there is still no deal with the provinces. Therefore, once again, to quote the Prime Minister, “Bragging is not doing.” The NDP-Liberal coalition is all about brag and no action. Unfortunately, until the Liberals are out of office, Canadians will continue to pay the price of the Prime Minister's lack of leadership and his broken promises. It is time to end the bragging. It is time for a change, time to assist hard-working Canadians and time for a common-sense Conservative government.
