OPPOSITION DAY MOTIONS

Madam Speaker: The resolution moved by the honourable member for Thompson (Mr. Ashton), standing in the name of the honourable Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae) who has seven minutes remaining. I will just remind all honourable members that since it is a while since we dealt with this that the speaking time is 10 minutes. I will give you a two-minute warning signal, and as previously agreed, at 5:15 the question will be called.

The honourable Minister of Health, who has seven minutes remaining.

Hon. James McCrae (Minister of Health): Madam Speaker, honourable members in the Legislature are now aware that significant change is in the works for health care in our province. The expectation of those who are involved in consulting with government and other health agencies is that we can do, as has been suggested by the honourable member for Crescentwood (Mr. Sale), that we can do more with less. He has made that clear in his comments in this House, and it is good to have someone in the New Democratic Party who can recognize that there are indeed efficiencies to be found within our health system. Sometimes one is led to think, well, they do not really believe that, but I think in their heart of hearts they do.

If New Democrats were on this side of the House and not on the other side, they would know, as governments right across this country know, that there are real--

Some Honourable Members: Oh, oh.

Madam Speaker: Order, please. I am experiencing difficulty hearing the honourable Minister of Health.

Mr. McCrae: --challenges, not imaginary ones out there, that there are fiscal realities, not imaginary ones, there are realities we cannot just wish away. Honourable members opposite daily in this House raise questions and have for eight years now that call for the spending of more and more taxpayers' money. They never talk very much about how we are supposed to raise the money, but they do talk a lot about spending more, more, more.

Well, I have commented that that is a somewhat dated approach to things. It was a popular means of governing during the '70s and '80s, a lot of the time when New Democrats in Manitoba were in office and there were ways to raise money in those days. You either borrowed money, which was a favourite resource for New Democrats, or they taxed them, which was another favourite of New Democrats. I remember 1987, the greatest tax grab in the history of Manitoba was imposed on Manitobans by a New Democratic government of the day.

I know that the resolution here is couched in language which is as negative as anyone could possibly imagine. Even the honourable member for River Heights (Mr. Radcliffe) cannot find words to be more negative than what we would find in this resolution today, and the honourable member for River Heights is very skilful in this area, so here is a real challenge to try to find more negative language than we have in this resolution here today, but I know that the honourable member for River Heights has a greater and higher calling, and that is to pay more attention to health care than trying to put a bunch of negative words together to try to put that across to people.

Madam Speaker, at the beginning of this year, the honourable member for Kildonan (Mr. Chomiak), as reported in the Winnipeg Free Press, suggested that the changes that we would embark upon would be more significant than anything happening since medicare began. He is right. I agree with him about that. The changes we announced on August 20, in my mind, go far enough that you could say that it was the most significant alteration in direction in the way we deliver health services since the beginning of medicare.

The honourable member for Kildonan also said in the same article that balanced budget legislation takes from us the flexibility that he suggests we ought to have. Well, that was the most telling thing that any New Democrat has said, I suggest, in the last number of years about the approach of the New Democrats. They do not want any commitment to live within our means. The honourable member for Kildonan's comments on that day reveal that and betray their true agenda, which is to go back to the old tax and spend and borrow method of government.

That is okay with me for them to feel that way. That is why I refer to them as the Neanderthal dogmatic protesters, NDP. That is not available to them. They can campaign on that and talk about that every day in this House if they want, but it is an illusion. It is. As sure as I am standing here before you today, that is not something anybody can deliver on in this country anymore, and thank goodness for that.

The people of Canada have said no to that style of government, and they will not have any more of it. So that regardless of the rhetoric of honourable members opposite, their intentions have to be different from their rhetoric because their intentions have to be tempered by reality. So that is why I say they should, in order to be believed, in order to have the credibility you need, they might want to adjust their approach. Far be it from me to tell them what to do, mind you, but if they want to enjoy any creditability at all, then they should get a credible line going. They have not got that yet, and I wish them well in their efforts.

Mr. Dave Chomiak (Kildonan): Madam Speaker, I think that the minister missed the entire point. In fact, I sometimes have the impression that the minister misses the whole discussion about health care largely because his government and the minister are totally isolated in their office and do not seek to actually talk to anyone who is out there in the health care system, who is in the front lines or anyone who is dealing with the system and have no idea of what the reality is.

The reality is, after eight years in office you have the longest waiting lists in this country. The reality is that halfway into the budgetary year you decided to cut back chiropractic visits. The reality is that halfway through the fiscal year you decided to cut back eye examinations. The reality is that you put out a Treasury Board submission that said you are going to privatize home care 100 percent and said we are going to save $10 million. Oh, no, we are not going to save $10 million. Oh, then, we are not sure if we are going to save $10 million.

You call that managing health care? This is the worst managed health care system in the history of the province of Manitoba, the worst.

Madam Speaker, the minister has the gall to stand up and talk about negativism, being negative. We are talking about reality. We are talking about a government that promised in its August 20 so-called new plan, about the seventh or eighth shift in programing they have done since they have been in office to try to find a solution, that they are going to reduce waiting lists. We are going to put in place a Central Bed Registry. That is going to reduce waiting lists. We indicated in this House that the Minister of Health in 1990 promised it. The Minister of Health in 1993 promised it. The Minister of Health promised it in 1994. The Minister of Health promised it during the election campaign, and now this new Central Bed Registry is going to reduce the waiting lists that are the longest in this country by reannouncing it August 20.

What kind of credibility do this minister and this government have? What do they expect us to say, to say thank you? Thank you for eight years of drift. Thank you for eight years of the longest waiting list in the country. Thank you for a health care system in which no one has confidence. Thank you for a health care system where you promised hundreds of millions of dollars in capital programming before an election campaign and then after an election campaign withdrew? Do you want us to thank you for taking that capital program and using that to make the savings that you are trying to achieve this budgetary year when you could not decide what to do? Do you want us to thank you?

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Does the minister want us to thank him for announcing changes to a Pharmacare program before consulting with caregivers, before consulting with the people in the pharmaceutical industry, for changing and gutting the program, promising $20 million in savings and finding out in this year's annual report that it cost them $19 million more because they screwed up the application of that program so badly? And the minister wants us to compliment him? The minister wants us to say you are doing a good job. I am sorry. You are not doing a good job. You are not managing health care well in this province. You put in a plan in 1992, and you did not adhere to that plan. You put a plan together and now in August, Madam Speaker, that is a rehash of old plans.

I often go out in the community and I ask people at public meetings, can you name one community-based service that this government has put in place to somehow reflect the changes, the closure of hospital beds, the hundreds and hundreds of beds that they have closed since 1992? I have never yet received a response from the audience. I will tell you some responses. Yes, they have put in place a nurse-managed care system that was promised but is very, very minuscule and very, very small. Yes, they have put in a little bit more money to home care, but we suspect and we suggest--

An Honourable Member: A little bit.

Mr. Chomiak: A little bit. The minister says a little bit. Does the minister not realize that until last year there were fewer unit hours and fewer people getting home care than in 1992? Does the minister not realize that? If he does not know that, he should look at his own annual report and it will show him that in fact there were fewer people receiving home care in units of service last year than 1992. Now, I admit, with the new privatized, expanded home care, so-called expanded home care of the minister, there will be expanded services, but what do you expect when you close hundreds and hundreds of beds? Surely, there will be need for expanded home care. But, Madam Speaker, we suggest in this motion, the fact that they are privatizing, the fact that money that should be going to health care is going to be going to lining the pockets of profit-making companies who have done very, very well under this government. That is where the home care dollars are going to go.

This government doubled the fees that people pay for personal care homes. They doubled the fees that people pay for personal care homes, and do you know this budgetary year they are giving less money to personal care homes, which is supposedly one of the priorities, which is supposedly one of the community-based services that they are supposed to put in place? In the big plan, which the minister is so proud of, announced August 20, he talked about expanding community-based care by expanding the number of personal care home beds. Yes, but who is paying for those? It is coming out of the pockets of residents of those personal care homes, and the government's contribution to personal care homes has declined.

The minister points to federal cutbacks. Madam Speaker, if you added up all of the money that the minister has cut off in health care and attribute it to federal transfer payment cutbacks, I suspect two or three times the amount of cutbacks have occurred than the minister's recognition, the minister's indication of the money that supposedly is not coming from Ottawa. Yes, there have been cutbacks, but they have spent that money over and over again in trying to justify their massive cuts to the system.

So, Madam Speaker, after eight years, after eight years of waiting, I think we can be a tad bit critical. In fact, if you look at the poor mismanagement of health care in this province, I think it is incumbent upon us to continue to criticize the government. Now the minister talks about positive. The minister says, well, what are the positive alternatives? We listed a whole series of positive. I want to give a couple of examples. The child health care plan, Healthy Child, for years the government has been studying it. They put out a report. They promised action in the election campaign. We have heard not a word on the Healthy Child plan. We put together a proposal that shames the government's proposal, and the government has yet to take initiative or direction from that.

We have been talking about waiting list concerns in this province for year after year after year. The government responded by putting in place a $500,000 plan a couple of weeks before the election, and that plan was in place through the election and shortly after the election. Since that time I have asked the minister on numerous occasions, will you institute a plan that will deal with the serious problems and shortages regarding waiting lists in the province? There has been nothing, and the reason we have long waiting lists is, the government has refused to take action.

So the minister cannot stand up here and constantly say, oh, you are only being negative. We have made suggestion after suggestion, and it has fallen on deaf ears, because the government agenda is to cut services overall, to cut back health care, to put it down to a core of services, a small core of services that the government believes should be funded and the rest will be funded by individuals out of their pockets, and that is the destruction of medicare and health care as we know it. That is why we are fighting this fight and we will continue to speak up on behalf of all Manitobans in this regard.

Mr. McCrae: Oh, you are talking fast, David.

Mr. Chomiak: Further--the minister says I am talking fast, because I have a lot that I have to say in a short period of time, and I want to make clear to the minister that our opposition to this is fundamental to the nature of how we see government functioning.

No better example of that exists than the minister's poorly conceived regional health policy bill that is before this Chamber right now. It is so poorly conceived that virtually no one in the health care system has agreed with that plan, and we have said to the government, withdraw the bill, go back, meet with people in rural Manitoba, meet with people to talk about the terrible shortcomings of this bill, but still the government insists on ramming through the Legislature an ill-conceived, poorly-planned, retroactive bill.

I only ask the minister, you know, the minister constantly refers to jurisdictions out of this province. I only ask the minister to look at Manitoba and to look at what you are doing to the health-care system and your poor management in this province of Manitoba. Take a step back. Talk to people that are on the front lines. Talk to patients. Do something about the longest waiting list in the country. Do something about the fact that absolutely nobody who is a caregiver in this system has any confidence whatsoever in this government or this minister with respect to delivering health care. Talk to some of those people, talk to some of them and see how perhaps they can suggest that we improve the system.

Madam Speaker, the minister is going on a course of privatization in home care. We have raised that constantly in this House. The minister can deny all that he wants that they were intending to privatize 100 percent, but the minister's own Treasury Board submissions, signed off by the minister said, 100 percent privatization, and it said, user fees.

I am afraid we are going down that path, and--[interjection] The minister talks about the NDP report. It is the Treasury Board submission signed by the Minister of Health saying, user fees, and saying, we are going to privatize 100 percent. Fortunately, Manitobans stood up en masse and said no to the privatization of home care and they will continue to do so, and the minister and the government at its peril will continue down its path.

I ask the minister re-examine his August 20th proposals that are basically rehashes of the proposals of 1992 and attempt to put them in a new light, to go back to the public of Manitoba and get their input. Thank you very much.

Mr. Mike Radcliffe (River Heights): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to put a few words on the record with regard to this resolution.

I am astounded at the temerity of our honourable colleagues on the opposite side of the House that they would have the audacity to present such an illusionary message to the people of Manitoba.

An Honourable Member: Illusory, Michael, illusory.

Mr. Radcliffe: Illusory, yes. I stand corrected by some of the honourable colleagues. That is right, she is a schoolteacher.

Madam Speaker, I think that one of the essential issues that is not being discussed here is that our government, the Filmon government, has put $60 million more into the Health budget than was originally contemplated. I do not know how many times we have to repeat this until our honourable colleagues, until it can penetrate their crania, that they will comprehend this issue. We are not cutting back on a global demonstration and presentation of health care. We are spending overall in our budget over one-third of our revenue on health care.

You look at the changing world today in the health care world, and I wanted to tell my honourable colleagues and my friends in this Chamber that I had the opportunity to go to St. Boniface Hospital with a colleague of mine and I had the opportunity to witness brain surgery. Perhaps that would be of benefit to some of my honourable colleagues on the other side of the House, I do not know, but I would not be so rash as to suggest that. Nonetheless, I saw cutting-edge technology.

If we are going to move ahead in this province and furnish accurate, technologically advanced, superior care to the people, we have to be changing the structure and the facilities that we have here in Manitoba.

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Madam Speaker, I stood in an operating room no more than two feet away, the distance I am from the honourable Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs (Mr. Reimer), and I watched somebody open, a physician open a thoracic cavity and I saw a person's heart beating right in front of me. [interjection] The honourable member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) is insinuating that--[interjection] The abuse and the slings and the arrows to which we are put in this Chamber are outrageous when you consider--

An Honourable Member: You should be a federal Liberal. Then you would know what abuse is.

Mr. Radcliffe: Madam Speaker, I had another opportunity to witness an operation or procedure over at the Pan Am clinic, when I saw a physician, a surgeon with arthroscopy insert a tube, two tubes into an individual's joint in their knee, and the whole joint was cast up on the television screen right in front of us, and he proceeded to cut out the damaged cartilage. These people walked into the Pan Am clinic, and I note that this is a for-profit facility, and I hesitate to use the p-word in the environs of our honourable colleagues over here, because I would not want to taint the environment in which they operate. Nonetheless, this was a for-profit facility. These patients walked in in the morning. We had no more than a 40-minute operation of procedure. There was a spinal anesthetic. These people were wheeled out.

Madam Speaker, you know what fascinated me? I saw the surgeon perform this technical, high-precision process, surgery for these patients, and then the circulating nurse took the patient out, and he went into the recovery room. And then do you know what the surgeon did next? The surgeon that I saw went and got a pail and a mop and proceeded to wash the effluvia down the drain. Rather than employing another whole person to do this, the surgeon was standing around there, and he said, I can do this; I am multifaceted. God forbid that this would be written into a collective agreement, but if there was a job to be done, this physician did it.

Some Honourable Members: Oh, oh.

Madam Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Radcliffe: I think I should perhaps step up the volume to--

Madam Speaker: Order, please. I am experiencing difficulty hearing the honourable member for River Heights.

Mr. Radcliffe: Well then, Madam Speaker, I would ask my honourable colleagues on the other side not only if they can hear but if they are in fact listening, or if they can perceive the wisdom that is actually being laid before them. One would allude perhaps to that simile of casting pearls, but I would not want to be so salacious as to--

An Honourable Member: You would not want to call them a bunch of hogs.

Mr. Radcliffe: Now the honourable Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae) has perhaps been a little emotional here, Madam Speaker, but I would not want to repeat what he said.

But there was another aspect to this process in the Pan Am Clinic that I noted was that during the process of the surgery there was a post wheeled into the operating room and a sling put on the post. The patient's leg was inserted in the sling, and that held the limb while the surgeon was operating on the person's limb. And do you know what that did? They called that the dumb orderly. And I do not mean that to be deprecating of any individual who would be assisting in such a procedure, but in this case, because they were running this operation as efficiently and as economically and as technologically advanced as one could, they were using machinery to replace outmoded and old-fashioned process. And this, I would suggest, is the wave of the future of where we are going with health care in this province.

I was told by the people who were operating this clinic that they could actually make a profit out of this process.

An Honourable Member: Oh, no. He did it again.

Mr. Radcliffe: I know, and this is--[interjection]

Madam Speaker, I see that this simulates the processor experience that we run through in the Supreme Court where the light flashes as they wrap up. So I will conclude by saying that--

An Honourable Member: No, the effluvia . . . .

Mr. Radcliffe: There is some effluvia emanating from the orifice of the honourable member for Crescentwood (Mr. Sale) on the other side of the Chamber, but I must advise this Chamber that I could in no way support this resolution and this should be voted out of hand immediately. I thank you, Madam Speaker, for this brief opportunity.

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Inkster): We support the resolution as it is being put on the Order Paper. This is an issue in which I can recall not that long ago, just a few months back, where we saw a government that was really doing a lot of damage within the health care area. Many would still argue today it is still doing some damage.

But, Madam Speaker, at the time, we attempted to introduce emergency debates. We tried to raise the issue during the Health Estimates, and we in fact argued and requested the Leader of the New Democratic Party to request an opposition day. So we were quite pleased that an opposition day was in fact requested, because we feel very strongly that the issues in which the resolution deal with are very important, critical. We wanted to have that debate back then.

Madam Speaker, even though a lot has happened since then, what I thought I would do is just focus a couple of minutes on the most recent development in terms of it as an issue that came up in today's Question Period, and that being the super-regional health boards that are being created by this minister through Bill 49.

Madam Speaker, I have argued in the past and will continue to argue into the future that in fact this is indeed a bad idea. It is duplication. That, in essence, we are going to see the community being taken out of our community health clinics. The Leader of the New Democratic Party earlier today talked about the religious orders that are out there that are contributing in a very significant way, either nonreligious organizations to a certain degree that participate in our community health facilities, and how their efforts are in fact going to be marginalized, but also the way in this bill is going to be an additional cost and a complete duplication of services. Everything those superboards are doing, are being proposed to be doing, in fact can be done today through the Ministry of Health in the current community health boards.

Madam Speaker, that is why we questioned the minister today in Question Period. That is the reason why, in essence, we are going to continue to lobby this government and hold this government accountable for the administration of health care. We are not going to accept the passing of the buck or the passing of responsibilities, if you like, to our federal counterparts in Ottawa or now these newly created boards by this government. Ultimately this is the government that has to be held accountable for the actions and for the administration of health care in the province of Manitoba.

Madam Speaker, at the time of this opposition motion, we were looking very seriously at strikes that were occurring within health care, in particular, the home care services. We believe that the government has lost out on an opportunity in terms of getting nonprofit organizations more involved in the delivery of home care services which would have been the much more efficient caring way to deliver this particular service. In particular, we believe that our community health clinics could have played a leading role in the development of health care services.

Other issues facing health care today are indeed very serious. The whole way in which the reorganizing of our urban hospitals has been questioned no doubt will continue to be heavily scrutinized, but let there be no doubt that the Liberal Party will do whatever is possible from within its means to hold this government accountable for the actions it takes in health care. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

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Mr. Tim Sale (Crescentwood): Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of my colleague's resolution.

Madam Speaker, there is a long, long history of health policy evolution that has been well written about and well studied in the United States, Britain, Canada, other places in Europe as well, and I think that the direction of this literature very clearly points to the failure of this minister and this government in terms of its inability to manage effectively the scarce and valuable resources that we allocate for our health care.

Most fundamentally, Madam Speaker, this government has spent its time preoccupied with the machinery of health care delivery instead of with the needs of patients and the possibilities of changing health care delivery patterns by working with people and working with primary caregivers to change the demand for service. The government has been preoccupied, as have other Conservative governments in Canada, with the supply of services, with rationing supply, and so that is why my honourable colleague for Kildonan (Mr. Chomiak) points out that we have terribly long waiting lists. It is why we have shortages of doctors. They have been trying to ration supplies to squeeze the health care system.

Now, they have done this for two misguided reasons. One, they think that this will save money. Madam Speaker, it is very clear that this does not happen. The government has closed already over 600 hospital beds. They propose in their latest closures to close another 460, and yet, having closed those 600 hospital beds in Winnipeg, they have not reduced the spending at hospitals by one single dollar. They have not been able--in spite of laying off hundreds of staff, inconveniencing thousands of patients and reducing the quality of care for Manitobans, they still have not saved much money. So they have been wrong-headed in the approach of trying to ration care, thinking that they could squeeze dollars out of the system in that way.

But, even more fundamentally, they ignored their own advice which they gave to themselves in 1992 in the previous Minister of Health's document, Quality Health for Manitobans: The Action Plan. Madam Speaker, that document, in its first chapter, correctly analyzed the problem and then cheerfully managed to completely ignore its own analysis in the second chapter. The document made it very clear that it was in the demand for health care, that is, how we help people to manage their own health, how we teach them preventive measures, how we provide primary health care, that the real possibility of changing the direction of health spending lies.

Therefore, Madam Speaker, when you ration care, when you propose to close hospitals, when you do not move to get our community clinics into the kind of shape that Quebec's and Ontario's and Saskatchewan's community clinics are in, when you ignore that possibility, when you do not touch private labs, you simply miss the boat in terms of what all of the government's own advisors told them in 1991 and '92, as well as what the rest of the developed world says about changing the spending patterns in health care.

Madam Speaker, this government has failed utterly to manage the resources that Manitobans have entrusted them with. They failed on the emergency room issue. They failed by proposing first to close some hospitals and then realizing that that was not possible. They have managed to completely mess up the implementation of their Pharmacare program--absolutely ludicrous that they have put Manitobans in a situation where $19 million more has been spent when they talked about saving, and yet, in the midst of having spent that much money more from Manitoba taxpayers, we have also put a lot of families in financial hardship who no longer can get the Pharmacare coverage on which they depended. I think particularly of diabetic patients, whose costs have skyrocketed, particularly if they have any kind of reasonable income at all; many diabetics, of course, do. They are suddenly paying thousands of dollars more for health care this year than they were last.

Madam Speaker, I want to talk particularly about the failure around the community-based options. It is very, very clear that Evelyn Shapiro knows what she is talking about. She has a publication record as long as your arm, and she is internationally sought out as an expert in the whole area of geriatric care. She and others have pointed out that it is not just the high-need care that one must provide to people who require home care, that is the Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae) has taken great delight in pointing out that the patients getting home care are sicker, they are more acute, they need a higher level of care. That is true, and that is useful, but when you cut out the services that enable seniors to stay in their homes in the first place, you simply invite the institutionalization which we have tried to avoid in this province and which, until this minister got his hands on the system, we were doing a fairly good job at.

Madam Speaker, you have to provide the home attendant services, the upkeep of stairs and the shovelling of sidewalks and the maintenance of the basic house or apartment itself so that it is a safe place for a senior to live in. If it remains that way, their demands for health care will be much lower. If you wait until they get good and sick and then have to provide them with very high levels of care, which the government is now committed to doing--this government has jeopardized the health care system in another more fundamental way by destroying Manitobans' confidence in the health care system, and I know their confidence has been destroyed because I have spoken with many, many of them at the door here in Winnipeg and in other communities in Manitoba.

The minister has succeeded in getting many Manitobans to start investigating private insurance. The minister has succeeded in creating a market for private top-up insurance where none existed and none ought to exist in this country of ours. He has made people fearful that they cannot count on medicare, and so, out of desperate concern for themselves and their families, more and more Manitobans are buying private insurance in order to assure themselves of care they do not believe will be available through their medicare system in future. That, Madam Speaker, is what will destroy our system quicker than anything else, because, as average Manitobans lose confidence in their health care system and begin to buy private insurance, they resent even more paying for the system which they cannot count on. So the underlying cement that has glued our medicare system together begins to erode and soften, and medicare itself begins to come apart, because no longer can Manitobans be assured that they will get the care which they formerly could count on and on which they absolutely depend for their quality of life in this province.

So the minister has created the conditions for the end of medicare through his mismanagement and his government's mismanagement. He is setting the ground for user fees. He is setting the ground for de-insuring services. He is creating the grounds in which seniors will no longer have confidence that they can in fact afford to maintain their own homes. They will wind up, just as American seniors do, losing their assets to the user fees of that absolutely horrible system to the south of us, Madam Speaker. This minister is creating the grounds for that system to grow in a very unhealthy way in this province. So I am very pleased to support this resolution.

We need this government to take a step back, particularly from the regionalization bill on which I want to close my comments, Madam Speaker. I think it is not inadvisable to use the word “totalitarian” when we talk about the regionalization bill because, when the minister and the government put themselves in the position of being the funder of the service, the determiner of its standards, the director of the clinical service, the evaluator of the service and the keeper of the data, we have a perfect circle here. Nothing escapes to the public's scrutiny. We have gotten rid of volunteers. We have gotten rid of accountable board members. We have gotten rid of the possibility of holding the government accountable because they control every element of this system.

They have failed to provide an adequate health care system. They have failed to provide an accountable health care system. Now, in their failure, they are going to take total control, just like they did with the Child and Family Services system, where they killed all the volunteers, took all of the services in-house, and prevent any kind of real information about the damage being done to children escaping for public scrutiny. That is a very serious and detrimental direction in which the government is taking our health care system. The government should be condemned for this. It is a totalitarian bill, and it must be defeated, Madam Speaker. It should be withdrawn. It must be defeated. I thank you for the opportunity to put these comments on the record.

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Mr. Peter Dyck (Pembina): Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House this afternoon to speak in opposition to that resolution. The reason that I stand here to speak in opposition is to illustrate to the members opposite that in fact our government has spent $60 million more in health care this past year than they did in the previous year.

Madam Speaker, 33.4 percent of our budget, and our budget being $5.5 billion, is being spent on health care, and if that is not a deep commitment towards health care, I do not know what is. So I believe that in fact our minister, our government, is taking the whole area of health care extremely seriously.

The other thing that I listened to intently in the last few minutes was the comments made regarding dollars spent on projects in this province. I believe that, again, our Health minister has taken a good look at the capital project within the province and, in taking a good look at them, has not used the political process in order just to put projects out there. So I believe that we are looking very seriously and very carefully at all aspects in our health care system, whether they relate towards personal use of it or whether they relate towards other projects.

Madam Speaker, I would like to just add a few more things to the record, and that is my own personal experience this past year with our health care facilities and the care that I received. On June 8, I was diagnosed as having necrotizing fasciitis.

An Honourable Member: What is that?

Mr. Dyck: That is a disease known commonly as the flesh-eating disease, and we have the calibre of physicians within our community who are able to detect the problem. They were able to do this within a matter of hours. From the first feeling of something that was wrong, of pain that I felt just below my kneecap, within six hours, the doctors were operating. That is our health care system. It is a system that is able to act expeditiously, very quickly, and I just want to pay a special tribute to the two doctors who were present at the time of the surgery. They are Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Bob Menzies. These doctors had the ability to diagnose, they had the ability to act, but further to that, they also had the ability to call in the staff immediately to assist them. It was not a procedure where they needed to wait for hours and hours, but it was done immediately.

Again, I oppose a resolution here stating that our health care system, in fact, is being cut back to the point where they cannot act. I have experienced exactly the opposite; I have experienced tremendous results in our medical system.

So I just want to put those few comments on the record just again to show that our medical system is, in fact, intact and is working well. I just want to mention that and give this information to the members opposite, so that they know what is taking place. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Mr. Gerry McAlpine (Sturgeon Creek): Madam Speaker, I, too, am a little dismayed at the resolution, when we talk about health care in terms of our commitment as a government and what this government has done and the care and the concern that we put to the health care system in Manitoba. It has been said before, but it does not appear to be sinking in in terms of the amount of money that is spent in the province of Manitoba on the health care budget.

Madam Speaker: Order, please. As previously agreed and in accordance with subrule 22(12), the Speaker shall interrupt the proceedings and forthwith put the question.

The question is the motion that has been moved by the honourable member for Thompson (Mr. Ashton),

BE IT RESOLVED that this House condemn the provincial government for seriously jeopardizing the future of our health care system by privatizing home care, making dramatic cuts to Pharmacare, making major cuts to our hospital system and eliminating coverage for such services as eye examinations.

Voice Vote

Madam Speaker: All those in favour of the motion, please say yea.

Some Honourable Members: Yea.

Madam Speaker: All those opposed, please say nay.

Some Honourable Members: Nay.

Madam Speaker: In my opinion, the Nays have it.

Formal Vote

Mr. Steve Ashton (Opposition House Leader): Yeas and Nays, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker: A recorded vote has been requested. Call in the members.

Division

A RECORDED VOTE was taken, the result being as follows:

Yeas

Ashton, Barrett, Cerilli, Chomiak, Dewar, Doer, Evans (Brandon East), Evans (Interlake), Friesen, Gaudry, Hickes, Jennissen, Kowalski, Lamoureux, Lathlin, Maloway, Martindale, McGifford, Mihychuk, Reid, Robinson, Sale, Santos, Struthers.

Nays

Cummings, Derkach, Downey, Dyck, Enns, Ernst, Filmon, Findlay, Gilleshammer, Helwer, Laurendeau, McAlpine, McCrae, Mitchelson, Newman, Pallister, Penner, Pitura, Praznik, Radcliffe, Reimer, Render, Rocan, Stefanson, Sveinson, Toews, Tweed, Vodrey.

Mr. Clerk (William Remnant): Yeas 24, Nays 28.

Madam Speaker: The motion is accordingly defeated.

Hon. Jim Ernst (Government House Leader): There may be a will, Madam Speaker, to call it 5:30.

Madam Speaker: Is it the will of the House to call it 5:30? [agreed]

The hour being 5:30 p.m., this House is adjourned and stands adjourned until 1:30 p.m. tomorrow (Wednesday).