Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I too would like to thank the witnesses.
I have two quick comments and then a question.
Certainly, I've looked at the arguments for and against the sustainability of OAS and though I'm not an economist, given the numbers I've seen, intuitively I really do believe we have a significant issue and that the government has had to make a very difficult decision in moving forward on that issue.
I thought Mr. Clemens' comments were very interesting on there perhaps being some opportunity in the future to address how we look at that piece. Nonetheless, I thought as an individual that if I were to have my OAS clawed-back—which wouldn't be popular—I would almost say, “You know what, there are bigger safety net holes for children than there are for seniors”. So I think that's a completely complex and different discussion that we could have.
In terms of EI, again, I don't think anyone here can disagree with the fact that people on EI should get regular notices of opportunities above and beyond the job bank. If you do, maybe you can put up your hand and we can engage in that debate.
I don't think anyone would argue with Canadians really knowing what opportunities there are around the temporary foreign worker program. I think, again, what we have a debate on is reasonable. Certainly, the government's opinion on having some very modest reforms and not relocating people to different communities is reasonable, and not looking at people making dramatic changes, but just providing those supports so they can move forward. Certainly, I don't think it's as dramatic as has perhaps been indicated.
Having said that, those are my two pieces that I wanted to talk about. I do notice that Mr. Clemens has some expertise in health care. I know it wasn't what you prepared for today, but I do want to quickly touch on it because I think it's important to all Canadians.
I had the opportunity in mid-2000 to do a lot of work around international comparisons. I went into that process very proud of Canada and our system, thinking that I would leave that process believing that we're the best in the world. I was quite quickly dismayed about what we were doing and where we were going, especially in terms of outcomes for expenditures.
You have probably noticed that as a government we have made significant commitments in terms of increasing these expenditures out to 2016-17. We believe there are many opportunities, and I think many countries have shown us that there are opportunities, within our current expenditures. Would you like to talk about your perspective in this area?