Mr. Speaker, you will permit me to disagree completely with my hon. colleague's remarks.
Health is a provincial matter. If the federal government wants to keep an eye on all the provinces, it should not go through the people of the provinces, but through the governments, whose job it is to administer the system within their province. When you start short-circuiting the authority of the individual provinces and going directly to individual citizens, you are short-circuiting a process that is normal, natural and desirable, because it is practical and necessary. You mess up the whole thing.
In June 1994, a journalist called me and asked me about the forum. I said it was window dressing. I say the same thing today, almost two years after the speech from the throne, this forum has served absolutely no purpose. We have not made any progress, and the provinces are increasingly aware that they are being given responsibilities and deprived of the means to carry them out. This is both unfair and inefficient, and, in the final analysis, the provinces will have the last word, because common sense always prevails.