Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. He is right. Four per cent to five per cent of the budget will be for administration. I do not think we have ever seen in this country a provincial or a federal government, no matter what party runs it, that has not been totally enamoured with the idea that there should be more bureaucrats than actual operations.
In most of the organizations I have been responsible for, the administrative costs have usually been around 3%. I think that 4% to 5% is high. If 4% to 5% of the total budget is used and the total budget keeps expanding, I have a problem with that. Five per cent of the original amount of $374 million is a lot of money. But if we put more money into research it is not necessarily appropriate to have 5% of $500 million or 5% of $800 million. We are adding to a major bureaucracy.
I know the difficulties Ron Martens has as an ALS afflicted individual. For Ron Martens and many of the other ALS people, and for all the young people addicted to drugs, we have to get off the petty politics, we have to get off trying to build a bureaucracy and trying to appoint our friends and we have to get on with doing more research. We must find solutions to these problems.
I hope the Minister of Health is listening to me. This is what we expect. We do not have any authority to follow up on bureaucracy in this country. It seems to survive by itself. However, I hope for once we do the right thing and put the vast bulk of money into research and helping others.