I agree with respect to the tax cuts. I think the public health system has proven itself. It went into difficulties in the 1990s, and we've had Romanow, and we've had Michael Dechter, who were all agents of the cutbacks. I haven't heard Frank McKenna—and I was there in the 1990s—say that it was a mistake to balance the budget on the back of health care. Now we're trying to fix it.
Also, the finance department—I'm trying to recall the year, but it was about four years ago—had P.J. Deveraux do a study of the sustainability of the health care system in the future, on a comparison with the GDP. It's about 10% of it now, and economist Deveraux said it was going to be like that for the next 10 years, the way we were going. So it was stable.
With regard to funding for education, there are two parts to it. Yes, you need to continue helping the provinces, helping the education programs, but I believe you have to give credit where credit is due. The federal government needs to give students notice, in the future of education, that they're giving the money. I'm a true believer, in a bursary system, in showing a student in New Brunswick or a nurse from Saskatchewan that the money he or she is getting is directly from the federal government, directly from being part of this great country. It's two avenues.
The schools of nursing, the medical schools, and CMA, the Canadian Medical Association, presented to you last year on the $1 billion fund over five years, and we supported that. We need some kind of initiative, without telling the provinces what to do. They need to be appropriately funded, and then we need this initiative overall to help the humungous shortage we have in health care professionals.