It's certainly not unique to your province; it's right across this country. As provincial budgets are being pressured or restricted, we're looking in Ontario, for instance, where I work, at about a 1% increase. When you look at inflation, however, going at a higher rate than that, that 1% actually represents a reduction in services. So in trying to accommodate our fiscal challenges, we are pulling back everywhere.
I'm afraid it's not a very thoughtful planned reduction and a fiscal restraint. As I've said, we could support and save money if we were able to reduce the transfers to hospitals, but because of silos and lack of integrated health systems and a regional planning approach, we're not able to do that. Certainly our hospital, which is full, would be very pleased to transfer our 140 long-term care beds out into the community.