A Senate prescription for fixing medicare is continuing to make waves in Ottawa. A debate raged in the House of Commons Monday over how the government should pay for the health care system.

CTV News Staff

A Senate prescription for fixing medicare is continuing to make waves in Ottawa. A debate raged in the House of Commons Monday over how the government should pay for the health care system.

On Friday, a committee headed by Senator Michael Kirby concluded that Canada's medicare system is not fiscally sustainable at existing funding levels. The report recommends that the federal government tack an additional 1.5 per cent onto the GST to provide the additional $5 billion a year the reports says is required to maintain adequate levels of health care.

The report concluded that unless access improves to timely health care, a parallel private system will ultimately emerge. Another highly-anticipated report, former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow's Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, is due out next month and is expected to endorse the maintenance of Canada's publicly-funded system.

But the Canadian Alliance says the government should allow private health care to be expanded now in order to ensure long-term funding.

"There is a serious problem in the system," Canadian Alliance Leader Stephen Harper said in Question Period at the House of Commons Monday. "We have continually, progressively underinvested in the department of health care professionals and we have underinvested in capital equipment and purchasing."

Health Minister Anne McLellan says development of the private sector is unlikely.

"There is no appetite in this country for a parallel private system," McLellan said. "We will have a publicly-financed health care system, and the challenge for all of us is to figure out to insure how we maintain a high-quality, accessible, publicly-financed health care system."

On CTV's political affairs program Question Period Sunday, Kirby called on the government to address the issue in the next federal budget, due in February. "I think it would be very difficult to go by another federal budget and not deal head on with what is the major issue facing Canadians which is health care," he said.

Finance Minister John Manley said last week he has "no intention of proposing an increase in GST," but he did hint that another type of tax increase to fund health care could be outlined in the next federal budget.

But opposition members have spoken out against raising taxes or implementing new ones to help shoulder the burden of funding health care.

"Canadians don't need and they also don't want a higher tax burden," said Rob Merrifield, the Canadian Alliance health critic, during Monday's Question Period.