First, I’m going to start off by thanking Tommy Douglas, who brought us publicly funded, publicly delivered health care.

I had a speech done, but I’m going to talk about two issues—and one is because it was raised by the opposition. I’m going to talk about a place called Shouldice.

This is how it’s going to work when it comes to private health care. I had a hernia a few years ago. I could have went to Shouldice. I didn’t have any extra—diabetes or something. My heart at that time was good—not so good now. But I decided to go to a publicly funded, publicly delivered hospital in Niagara Falls to get my hernia done. It cost $4,000. If you go to Shouldice—and this is what the problem is when we go to private—it’s somewhere between $18,000 and $20,000. So instead of that $14,000 going back into publicly funded, publicly delivered—does anybody know where that extra money is going?

Interjection: Shareholder pockets.

Interjection: That’s exactly what happened.

Now I’m going to tell you a personal story, because I think it’s important to relate. Some of these people here aren’t as old as I am. I’m going to tell you what happened to my mom and dad. When I was growing up, I lived in poverty. I never understood why. We had the neighbours come and bring us food. I remember the firefighters coming and bringing me Christmas presents. Then I got talking to my sister and the rest of my family. We were sick—I had five brothers and sisters—five. My sister Irene had a hole in her heart, my brother had some mental and physical challenges, and my parents had to pay for their health care costs, because at that time there was no Tommy Douglas who said, “No, this is wrong, that we’re going to have people have to pay.” Do you know what happened? We lived in poverty for a long time, and it wasn’t my mom’s fault, it wasn’t my dad’s fault, because my mom and dad worked. They worked seven days a week. They worked very hard, but what happened is, every penny they were getting was to pay for their medical bills.

Do you know what the biggest day in my mom and dad’s life was? After 30 years, they paid off the medical bills for our family—30 years. And I’m challenging anybody in this House—because that’s what’s going to happen if we destroy our publicly funded health care system. It’s not going to be the rich who are going to suffer, because they’re always going to have lots of money; it’s going to be the poor and the less fortunate in our society, families like mine—30 years to pay off their medical bills.

My dad got his first car after 35 years. His first car was a standard—it was an ugly car, by the way, but it was a car. He was so proud that he was able to drive us.

So please rethink what you’re doing. Support Tommy Douglas—the greatest Canadian ever in this country, voted by Canadians. Don’t go the wrong way, because if you guys continue to go down this road—

Interjection.

If you continue to go down this road, you are going to get defeated in the next election, because everybody who has took on publicly funded, publicly delivered health care—that’s what has happened to them. You’re going to have the same thing happen to you that happened to the Liberals when they privatized hydro: You’ll be down to a van.

We’ve heard a lot about Tommy Douglas today and the great work he did in getting the Medical Care Act passed in 1966. I’m sure my friends opposite know that there are four core principles to that policy—before the federal government will entertain any health care transfer. Those four principles are public administration, comprehensiveness, universality and portability.

We know that this government spent $78 billion last year on health care, which was a $14-billion increase from the year before. We also know that in recent discussions with the federal government, they’ve increased that funding over the next 10 years by $8.4 billion.

Will the member opposite agree that the federal government would have ceased the transfers if we were privatizing health care in Canada? Will you admit that this privatization is just a smokescreen that you are proposing to try to somehow discredit the much-needed changes this government is making?