Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. I can advise the member that unlike any other opposition party, at least in my political lifetime, the Reform Party has year after year presented a detailed alternative to the government's fiscal plan.
If the member would like it, he can get it from the website at www.reform.ca or by writing me postage free at the House of Commons. The document he would be looking for is called “Taxes and Health Care: A Prebudget Submission of the Official Opposition”. We go through in some great detail the kind of choices we would make.
Yes, we would spend more on health care, more than the government has. We would completely replace the $16 billion cumulatively that has been taken out of the health care system by the hardhearted misplaced priorities of the government. We would do it not by raising overall spending.
Liberals cannot imagine. They say how can you increase one program without increasing overall spending? It is magic. The word is called priorities. We think health care is a higher priority than the kind of corporate welfare that was increased in this budget by grants, subsidies and loans to corporations, their friends in the big corporations.
We think health care could be increased not by increasing overall spending but by cutting low priority spending and the kind of pork barrel ministry of the minister of heritage and by reducing subsidies to bloated crown corporations and by privatizing redundant crown corporations that can operate more efficiently in the private sector and by eliminating grants and handouts to interest groups.
Billions could be saved, taken from low priority wasteful pork barrel spending and put into the high priority program area of health care.