Thank you.
Minister, welcome to the committee, and thank you to the officials for being with us here today. I want to start with some of the big, broad issues facing Canadian health care and I'm going to start with the health accord.
As you know, the Conservatives unilaterally imposed a 10-year health accord in 2014, with a formula that contained a 6% escalator for the first three years until 2017 and then it dropped to 3% for the remaining seven years thereafter. Your mandate letter, of course, commits you to negotiating a new agreement. I've asked the Parliamentary Budget Office to review your budget and fiscal framework and they have confirmed to me that they can't find any money budgeted, either in your budget or fiscal framework, for any increase to the escalator after 2017.
During the election your leader quite famously told Canadians that you can't have a Tommy Douglas health care system on a Stephen Harper budget.
Is your government going to increase the escalator after 2017, or are you going to adopt the Conservative's health transfer escalator funding?