Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Health. Canadians are faced with a fundamental dilemma: there is less government money to go around to support medicare as we know it yet everyone wants to preserve medicare.
How do we reallocate tax dollars and in general bring more resources to bear on medicare in a climate of economic restraint? A lot of our problem is really not internal to medicare but rather the fiscal climate within which it is trying to operate.
Could the minister clarify the larger fiscal climate that affects medicare and the solution to that dilemma? How do we address the overall funding shortfalls for medicare that are getting worse every day? It is a national problem. What will the federal government do about it?