Mr. Speaker, let me start with the plan my colleague mentioned. It is unbelievable what the government has done with regard to studying health care and deciding what kind of plan with which to come forward. How much money did the government spend over the last decade? We sent that question to the Library of Parliament and it came back with the answer of $243 million just to study health care. We do not need another study. We do not need to wait until summer to figure it out. We know the answer. What we need is some performance and some leadership, but we are not getting either.
Canada taxes higher than any of the OECD nations. When it comes to health care, Canada only rates 13th out of the OECD nations. As far as dollars per capita, Canada ranks third. If we look at the age of our population, Canada ranks first. Those figures came out of a study done by the Fraser Institute last year. That means Canada put in per capita higher than any other country. Just providing money will not solve our health care problems. We need to look at reforming it and putting it on a sustainable path.
Two weeks ago, the Conference Board of Canada said that health care in its present state was headed into a failure. It cannot be sustained in its present form. The board did not come up with those conclusions by accident--