The mandate of the forum is to develop a vision for health care in the 21st century. It will create a dialogue among the public, federal, territorial and provincial governments for renewing the better health of Canadians. It will deal with and identify priorities concerning a consensus for change in all the provinces. At the same time it is determined to respect the five principles of health care upon which medicare was built.
Obviously the forum will have to deal with issues such as setting guidelines for technology. It will have to deal with issues such as the aging society. It will have to deal with what kind of financing is required for a future health care system. All these things have been said by the minister in her press release in June and they will happen.
With respect to the hon. member's question concerning the transfer of payments in federal financing, the member well knows the government has made a commitment to stable financing in health. We have made that commitment by not cutting transfer payments for this year.
In the year 1995-96 we will begin to have our federal transfer payments financed on the gross national product minus 3 per cent. Given that we will still the following year be putting in $214 million more than we will be putting in this year, The population growth will be factored in and therefore the transfers will be increased according to population growth each year.
One of the things we will be doing in financing is that we are not touching the tax transfers. This means a sizeable amount of money is still going to be put into provincial coffers with regard to financing the health care system.
The member well knows that the health care system does not only depend on-