Mr. Speaker, I would like to affirm to the hon. member that the increase of $2,000, I believe, having attended a great number of the finance committee meetings, was in addition to the already scheduled increases. I think he will be relieved to hear that.
In terms of smart spending in health care, I was extremely interested in the brief of the Canadian Healthcare Association, which said that putting more money into the health care system, even if were available, would not be the answer.
We are extremely worried that accountability in the health care system is not there. As we know from some of the briefs, 60% of the things that are being done in health care, as we speak, have never been subjected to any sort of evidence based practice. As was recommended in the finance committee report, we have to make sure that there is money for information technology and the ability to practise evidence based medicine as well as research into health care delivery. We need proper data in terms of how we deliver health care.
A lot of us were very impressed by the University of Ottawa and Queen's University study of the sustainability of the health care system. It showed that if we actually moved to best practices, or moved people to the right level of care, there would be $7 billion in savings annually in Canada. Many briefs said that this was not about dollars, it was about mismanagement. We need a real system instead of this patchwork quilt of non-systems.