Conservative leader Stephen Harper pledges Patient Wait Times Guarantee

02 December 2005

Click here for PDF version

Plan upholds principles of Canada Health Act; rejects private, parallel system

Wherever I travel, ordinary Canadians tell me that our health care system is their most valued public service – but it is also their most serious worry about the future. I understand those concerns – our public health care system is my health care system, too. Like you, I know how it feels when I have to take my son or daughter to the emergency room. Like you, I know the experience of visiting ailing relatives and dying parents in the hospital ward. Like you, I know what it’s like to visit our family doctor and sit in the waiting room.

Despite the waits, we consider ourselves lucky to have a family doctor. 1.2 million other Canadians are still waiting for one, and that’s just the start. Seniors tell me that it seems harder and harder to see a specialist. Families say that they feel like they have to wait longer and longer for treatment. They’re right. Since the Liberals took power, the average waiting time has doubled to almost 18 weeks.

This isn’t a partisan issue, it’s an issue that concerns anyone who ever gets ill. That’s why it has now become an issue of human rights. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court of Canada found that Canadians are suffering, even dying on waiting lists. As the Chief Justice herself wrote: “Access to a waiting list is not access to health care.” The court said that making patients suffer on waiting lists violates the basic human right to security of the person. The court gave governments one year to address the problem.

We have no choice – patients have been saying it, doctors and nurses have been saying it, and now the court has confirmed: an exclusively public health insurance plan must be used to provide people essential service, not to deny it to them. We must fix our public health care system or else we risk losing meaningful public health care.

This morning I want to outline the course of action we will take to address that challenge. But first, I want to point out the wrong ways to go. Any plan must comply with the principles of the Canada Health Act. Anything less is the violation of a sacrosanct commitment that all governments have made to Canadians. We must treat all patients equally for essential health care services, regardless of ability to pay – anything less is un-Canadian. We must maintain a single-payer publicly funded health care system – anything less is untenable. There will be no private, parallel system. Having said these things, we must also be candid about the enormity of the challenge.

Protecting public health care is a difficult and challenging task. Paul Martin likes to talk about a quick fix for a generation – Canadians now know there’s no such thing as a quick fix for health care. The Liberals think that protecting medicare means making more promises. They made promises in a 2003 health accord. They made more promises in a 2004 health accord. I expect them to make even more promises in this campaign. It’s time to stop promising and start delivering. A list of promises no more constitutes treatment than a waiting list constitutes treatment.

We will address the concerns of patients, and we will respond to the Supreme Court, by doing what the federal government has failed to do. We will put the emphasis on honouring the core commitments that governments have made. This will require real reform and real change. Throwing money at the problem, no matter how many billions, won’t solve it.

The Liberals and NDP say that we can’t introduce reforms, we can’t improve health care, and we can’t guarantee faster access without destroying the universal public character of medicare. Canadians know that is not the case. We can reform medicare. Reforms have been taking place — especially in alternative, private delivery of publicly insured services — despite the denials of the Liberal government. We can achieve better results for patients and maintain the essentials of our system of public health insurance, but in order to maintain our system, medically necessary treatment must be delivered within clinically acceptable wait times.

I am pleased to announce that one of the first acts of a new Conservative government will be to sit down with the provinces to develop a Patient Wait Times Guarantee. The patient wait times guarantee will be based on the recommendation of the bi-partisan Senate committee chaired by Michael Kirby and Marjory LeBreton with the key contribution of Dr. Wilbert Keon. The concept of the guarantee is that patients must be able to receive treatment in a medically acceptable maximum time for a publicly insured service. If this is not available in their own area, they must be given the option of receiving treatment at another hospital or clinic, even outside of their home province. Clearly and unequivocally embracing the Patient Wait Time Guarantee is the only way governments can preserve both the principles of the Canada Health Act and the Charter of Rights. Of course, after 12 years in office, the Liberals have in fact provided no such performance measures for our health care system.

More than a year ago, the federal and provincial governments did finally agree to establish maximum acceptable waiting times for key treatments and procedures. Those standards were supposed to have been set by December 2005 – this month. Unfortunately, even if this timeline is met, governments will then have until December 2007 — another two years — to set targets and actually begin to meet those standards. This is not good enough – it predates the Supreme Court decision. It also falls short of the urgency with which the public expects action on this issue.

The Wait Times Alliance, which represents the medical professionals affected by long wait times, has already filed a report identifying clinically acceptable maximum wait times. The Alliance says governments can set targets to meet those wait times by this coming spring. I agree with the Wait Times Alliance. Patients need us to set those targets and start meeting them now, not two years from now.

We will bring all governments back to the table, not to bicker about more money, but to set wait time targets across the country, and figure out a plan to begin meeting them. That process will begin immediately after the election, and conclude in 2006. It will require us to work to set priorities, and some of those priorities are obvious. We must, for example, increase the number of doctors and nurses by cooperating with the provinces and territories to expand educational programs for health care professionals. We need at least 3,000 more family doctors in Canada, and we have to start closing this gap now.

Unlike Paul Martin, I won’t call our approach a quick fix. What it will be is a call to action. We are going to reduce wait times. We are going to hold governments accountable for their commitments. We are going to do what it takes to protect our public health care system and respect the Charter of Rights, because the Liberals have not done what is necessary.

On January 23rd, stand up for accountability in health care, stand up for a patient guarantee, stand up for Canada