Madam Speaker, the hon. member talked about how the other provincial governments and leaders dealt with the budget just tabled in the House and with the inadequate amount of dollars that flowed from that budget to the health care system. Could the hon. member just expand on that a little bit more?
I am now told that the Minister of Health and the Minister of Finance have said in some news reports that, eureka, there may well be some more dollars available that they will put into health care if and when the health ministers sit down with them and talk about the system and how they will put those into place.
Does the hon. member have an awful lot of confidence in the co-operative federalism that has been demonstrated by the government previously and on other issues more so than health care? Does he believe that the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Health will negotiate in good faith? If they were, then why were those dollars not mentioned prior to the budget being formulated? All of a sudden they are backtracking a bit and saying “Of course, there is more money there if in fact we can negotiate the way that should be distributed”. Would the hon. member please like to expand on that topic just a bit?