Mr. Speaker, congratulations on your new position.
It is good to hear that we have one more guilty Liberal on the other side. I want to ask him a specific question. I have a situation in my riding regarding health care. He talked a little bit about northern health care and the fact that many of his people have to rely on planes and those kinds of things to receive health care. He should probably be thankful for that because in one section of my riding people are not even going to be able to have that level of health care themselves.
This summer the provincial government, taking federal money and putting into health care, decided it would shut down a number of the health care centres in my riding and remove ambulance services in other areas. One of the areas involved affects communities along the border. This is an area that involves Val Marie, which has Grasslands National Park near it, the communities of Bracken, Climax, Frontier and Claydon. All told it is an area of about 2,500 square miles.
The government has basically decided that it is going to shut down the only health care facility in the area. The local people have desperately tried to do something to maintain their health care. They went to the provincial government. The provincial government refused to negotiate with them. My constituents have actually appealed to the new Minister of Health. They have not had a response from him.
Instead, my constituents decided they would do something themselves to preserve their health care. In this small rural area these folks have now raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep the public health care facility open.
We have talked in this place a number of times about two tier health care. We see it showing its face in Saskatchewan. We have an area where health care is being denied to people. These are rural folks, farmers, some manufacturers, and business people. Some of the rural municipal governments are involved in raising money for their own health care facility.
I would ask the member, why is there no accountability in rural areas for health care? Why is it that in health region number one, the birthplace of medicare, people are now having to raise private money to keep their public health care facilities open?