Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member could help us understand something. He is very proud of the fact that the Liberal government set up medicare. At that time the irrevocable promise never to be broken was that it would always be funded on a 50:50 basis: 50 per cent by the federal government and 50 per cent by the provincial governments.
Now he turns around and says: "We are the protectors of medicare". They removed $6 billion or $7 billion over the last couple of years and are down to 20 per cent of the funding, not 50 per cent. This is one of the best kept secrets in Canada. The Liberals are getting away with it wholesale.
I know the member is a very honourable gentleman. He certainly would want the Canadian people to know and to understand that it was he and his colleagues who removed $7 billion from health
care. Only 20 per cent of the funding for health care is covered by the federal government. He knows that.
Would he be prepared to admit in the smallest way that maybe some of the Liberal talk about being the protectors of health care is perhaps a little thin? In actual fact it is the federal Liberal government that is destroying health care funding, forcing provincial governments to make very hard and very difficult decisions, and letting provincial governments take the fall when it is the Liberals who are short-changing them.