Mr. Brand:
Would the hon. member permit a question? Is he familiar with the meaning of the word "universal" as it is used in the Hall report? If not, I am perfectly willing to acquaint him with it.
Mr. Douglas:
I am perfectly familiar with it. I am perfectly familiar with the paragraphs in which Mr. Justice Hall argues against any kind of means test and contends that the indignity and humiliation of any kind of test is totally uncalled for.
Mr. Brand:
May I ask-
Mr. Douglas:
The hon. member can sit down. I suggest he study the Hall Commission report. If he would do that instead of making the rather asinine statements he was making this afternoon I think he could make a more useful contribution to this committee and to his party.
Mr. Starr:
Don't get mad.
Mr. Lambert:
Come to Alberta and say that.
Mr. Douglas:
As a matter of fact, I can tell the hon. member for Edmonton West that I said exactly the same thing in the province of Alberta.
Mr. Lambert:
And where did it get you?
Mr. Douglas:
Of course, the hon. member for Edmonton West is very interested in where it gets one. That is why the Tory party had one program in Alberta and another in
March 8, 1966 COMMONS
Saskatchewan. That is why when they were in office they wiggled from one side of the fence to the other and never did anything about medicare. That is why there were no great forward steps in health and welfare legislation while we had a Tory government.
Mr. Lambert:
We got the whole Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act.
We set up the royal commission.
Mr. Douglas:
I am suggesting that the Tory party should now tell this committee and tell the people of Canada whether they agree with the hon. member for Saskatoon that medicare in this country ought not to be on a universal basis, that there ought to be discrimination so that only those who can qualify on a means test basis will be able to get medicare under a government sponsored plan. Do they support the kind of plan that has been set up in Alberta? I think they should tell us. That is what the plan in Alberta amounts to.
It means an arrangement whereby those who are able to pay for private insurance can do so while those who cannot pay the very high premiums demanded may, if they are willing to undergo the indignity, get the government to contribute part or all of the premium provided a means test can be passed.
Mr. Lambert:
You have a means test attached to many other programs.
Mr. Douglas:
I notice a great many interruptions from the Tory benches but I have not yet heard any person in the Tory party say whether or not they stand for the universal application of medicare to all citizens without any means test. We are very anxious to hear just that.
The hon. member for Saskatoon took my hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre to task for urging the minister to press on with medicare by introducing enabling legislation to allow the provinces to come in if they choose to comply with the four conditions laid down by the Prime Minister taken directly from the Hall Commission report. What the hon. member is suggesting is that the federal government should depart from the Hall Commission recommendations and allow each province to establish any kind of medicare program it wishes.
This means that persons moving from province to province would find totally different conditions for qualifying. We would find
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Supply-Health and Welfare that the transferability, the portability of medicare would be completely destroyed. The only way in which you can have national medicare is by having uniformity and the only way in which you can have uniformity is by having universal application so that people can move from Quebec to British Columbia or from Ontario to Nova Scotia and find they are capable of qualifying wherever they may go.
The hon. member for Saskatoon warned the minister against having medicare meet what he called the "long, rough road" it had in the province of Saskatchewan. Mr. Chairman, medicare only had a long, rough road in Saskatchewan because there were mossbacks like the member for Saskatoon who fought against its introduction. There have always been antediluvians who live in the past and who fight every kind of progressive measure when it is first introduced. Yet the medical profession in the province of Saskatchewan has since come out and said that the plan has been operating successfully.
Much of the opposition was totally unnecessary. I simply want to say that I hope the medical profession has learned from this experience and that its members are prepared to sit down with representatives of the government in Ottawa and with representatives of the various provincial governments to work out suitable arrangements whereby we can have the universal application of medicare to all Canadian citizens.
Let them make no mistake about this. They can fight rearguard actions. They can make the kind of speeches we heard this afternoon from the hon. member for Saskatoon. But the great bulk of the Canadian people want universal medicare and they are going to have it in spite of all the reactionaries, and I want to say to the minister that the people will give him their wholehearted support if he has the courage to put the legislation on the statute books.
Mr. Skoreyko:
If the Minister of National Health and Welfare introduces the kind of program which the hon. member suggests, would he risk his seat in Burnaby-Coquitlam so as to allow the minister to be re-elected?
[DOT] (5:00 p.m.)
Mr. Martin (Essex East):
No. The hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam would come over here.
Mr. Brand:
Mr. Chairman, perhaps I may be allowed to make a few brief remarks in
March 8. 1966
Supply-Health and Welfare response to the hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam. I thank him for having made those observations. I seem to have touched a nerve somewhere. I do not wish to take away any credit from the hon. member or from the government he had the honour to lead when he brought about many useful and progressive measures in the province of Saskatchewan, measures which are working very well at the moment. But I do not wish him to take credit for those he did not bring in and I noted that he mentioned the cancer program. This was started by one of the members of the Hall Commission, Dr. D. M. Baltzan, of Saskatoon, during the Conservative administration. It was first started as a pilot plan and it was made free by the Liberals, admittedly as an election bribe in-
Mr. Douglas:
May I ask my hon. friend a
question?
Mr. Brand:
Just sit down. I have not finished. The hospital insurance program which your government brought in did an admirable job. I merely pointed out in my address that nothing has been done to take care of the distaff side, and I would ask the hon. member to listen carefully. As I suspected, the means test was once again used by the hon. member as a smokescreen, and this is exactly what I meant. I said nothing about a means test in any medicare scheme. I made no pronouncement about the policy of our party. I asked some questions which the hon. member did not take time to listen to, and so we have had more sophistry.
The hon. member said I opposed the four main points. If he reads Hansard tomorrow I think he will find that is not the case. He said that I said we had not endorsed the Hall Commission report. I invite him to read the speeches of the Leader of the Opposition, and I think I shall send him some of mine also.
May I just read from the Hall Commission report, paragraph No. 2, under the heading "Health Charter for Canadians":
"Universal" means that adequate health services shall be available to all Canadians wherever they reside and whatever their financial resources may be, within the limitations imposed by geographic factors.
I understood the hon. member to suggest that he thought the medical profession had learned its lesson. I thought he had learned his in Regina a few years ago. May I point out that the plan at present in operation in Saskatchewan is not the plan originally proposed. Admittedly the idea is there but the plan was changed. The legislation was
changed by a special session of the legislature called by Premier Lloyd of Saskatchewan after the meeting of the doctors and the Saskatoon agreement on July 23.
This plan operating in Saskatchewan is not the plan originally proposed by the hon. member's government. That plan outlawed the private practice of medicine in the province of Saskatchewan. Certainly the present plan is working well now. The reason it is working is that the doctors are still dedicated individuals who are working hard to give the best possible care to their patients despite the fact that there is overutilization of their services, despite the fact that they are working much longer and much harder than they ever worked. But I am afraid that by reason of the amount of work they are doing they are working in less depth than they should be in medical practice, and these are things which must be considered by the committee and the government in any proposals for medicare throughout the country.
Hear, hear.