Tuesday, May 16, 1967

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services must be uniform to all insurable residents, and the coverage must be 90%

raising in three years to 95%. Finally, the resident requirements must not exceed three months.

Ottawa’s contribution is 50% of the average cost of the plan in all provinces. Now this particular phase of it is quite favourable to this province provided that our costs in relation to the costs in other provinces do not substantially change. Because this province may be able to recover perhaps as high as 60% or perhaps even higher than 60% of the costs of Medicare, and other provinces are now fighting that they should not be below the 50% level. Under the present law some of them might esti- mate that they could go as low as 40%. So that if our cost of medical care and physician services do not change substantially in relation to the other provinces we have one clause that is quite favourable to this province. The features I do not like, of course, are the large coverage requirements and the uniformity requirement be- cause again we must cover all people immediate or otherwise and I have not been able to stretch my imagination enough to agree with the principle of giving to the rich. They can well afford to buy their own medical care, but under the Ottawa plan of course we have no choice, we must cover 95% of our population or go out of the plan. Generally speaking these “made in Ottawa” plans have always been offered to the provinces whether they could afford them or not. It has been my feelings through the years that many of the provinces could ill-afford the plans offered, and again, Mr. Speaker. Ottawa sometimes has a nasty habit of “bowing out" of those plans. The one in physical fitness was the first one they bid “goodby” to, and I believe by 1970 they are bowing out of the hospital construction grants when they should be doubling, or tripling such grants. They have served notice that they will discontinue them and whether we will get tax points or something else to compensate I do not know. I do not like this feature of the “made in Ottawa” plans.

Now what are our more urgent priorities in the field of health? If we are to s end money, should we expend a vast sum in a certain hospital project or what e se should we consider? Well, as was mentioned in this House this morning, the housing accommodations for custodial patients at Riverside is far, far from good. You could not feel too proud of going out to those buildings, knowing that this is where we are putting hospital patients. I know the people out there are doing their best; the place is clean, it is as clean as it can be made under the conditions, but these buildings are far, far outdated. They should be written off and replaced. Whether we will replace them in the same way or whether we put patients in some other form of shelter I do not know at this time. At any rate, the buildings mt

there are just not good enough and something will have to be done in the very immediate future.

Another program on which we have only scratched the surface is the program of the care and the attention which we give to the children of this province. Our childfsychiatrist, at one meeting of the Board of Governors of Riverside last winter, state that Prince Edward Island had approximately 38,000 children under sixteen years of age. Of these 1,000 are estimated to have emotional disorders. 900 may be mentally retarded, 3,000 have learning disorders, 600 suffer from social deprivation, and 600 have speech and hearing disorders. According to this Doctor. remedial re- commendations would include 36 additional trained staff and many of these people are not available We do not have on our staff a single speech therapist. I think the reason for this is that the salary has never been high enough to attract them: when we do get them, we lose them. This, 03 course. goes for a lot of professional salaries. But regardless, we have not gone sufficiently along the way in caring for the children of this province, and I suggest that this is one thing that should be given a much higher priority than it has received in the past.

This, Mr. Speaker, concludes my remarks at this time. (Applause).

L. George Dewar: (Second Prince) Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a few comments at the present time on the presentation of the Provincial Treasurer before this House many weeks ago. We had some complaints last year from the financial critic when he was standing on this side, tha tthere was a great delay in the con- sideration of the Budget. I must point out that this year the delay is even greater than it was last year and we are getting down to it now in the closing hours of this

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