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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 320

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 29, 2024 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 320 - May/29/24
Hon. Mark Holland (Minister of Health, Lib.)
  • May/29/24 9:03:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, yes, I do share the concern the member has. My friend and colleague points out that we have seen it a number of times. In fact, Newt Gingrich also talked about common sense and brought in some of the most disastrous criminal justice reforms that have ever been visited on the United States. He himself afterwards said that it was the greatest mistake of his political life and a dreadful mistake. It is a terrible thing, when the world is complicated and difficult and is going through as much as it is, to pretend that there is a magic wand, as if all we have to do is take away people's carbon rebate and all the problems of the world will go away. That is the only solution I have heard from the other side. The Conservatives talk about cutting government spending, but they will not say where. We know they will not support dental care. We know they do not support pharmacare. What else are they going to cut? The major investments we are making in health care are absolutely critical for making sure that our public health system is there for everybody. If we do not have a public health care system, what we wind up with is two tiers of care. The private system will go after the most profitable care, will go after the care that makes the most money, and the public system will be left with the most expensive care. It means that not only will care get more expensive, but those who are left and can only afford the public system will get deteriorating care. There will then be a migration of money and talent from the public system. That is what we have seen all over the world. I have told this story before, but it bears mentioning again because it really reflects the question of what kind of country we want to live in. I had the opportunity a couple of months ago to go away for the weekend with my partner. When we were down in the United States, we saw a man collapse. He had some sort of health event that caused him to fall to the ground unconscious. We went over to his side and called 911. When he came to and we told him not to worry because paramedics were on the way, his concern was not for his health; his concern was for how he was going to pay for his health. His concern was that he did not have enough money to deal with the health emergency in front of him. We could say that this is an American-only problem, but we have holes in our system we are trying to fix. We have diabetes patients who are saying they cannot adhere to their diabetes medication. I will go one further. I met with Dr. Mehta in Scarborough. Dr. Mehta told me he has patients whom he tells, “If you follow this regime of taking your medication and eating the right foods, you're going to stay healthy.” He asked why he is even working as a doctor, because the people in front of him cannot get medication and cannot adhere to it. It means they are going to wind up with a cardiac event or stroke, or they are going to go blind or lose a limb. To me, that is not acceptable. Those are the consequences in front of us. Either we step forward and continue to fill those gaps to make sure we are preventing bad outcomes or we use “common sense”, which is to pretend snake oil and these solutions of slogans, which are nothing more than the sentences that are tweeted, are going to fix the complex problems we have. We have to meet the moment we are in with real solutions that are going to provide answers. I am proud that we have health partners and health ministers across the country we can work with. They are putting aside the partisanship and saying, “Let's get it done.” I wish we had an opposition party that would do the same.
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