Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from my colleague. It is a very important issue.
One has to ask the question: How can this be called a health care budget when there is nothing in it to deal with the economic and social disparities in our society which contribute to ill health, disease and poor quality of life? How can it be fathomed, this being a federal health budget, when we have third world conditions on reserves and when a reserve such as God's Lake Narrows in my province of Manitoba has just reported 12 cases of TB? That certainly is an important issue that the government has failed to address. There must be a focus on disease prevention and health promotion.
The other issue my colleague raised concerned economic disparities. As the gap grows between the rich and the poor and those at the low end of the wage scale do not see any benefit and are not able to improve their quality of life or even their ability to survive on a day to day basis, how does that affect their health? We know from study after study that money may not buy happiness, but it certainly does buy health. We know that when one's income improves, one's health also improves.
Our concern with the budget is not only its failure to acknowledge that, but that it actually worsens the situation by not dealing with unemployment, by not dealing with wage inequities, by not dealing with homelessness, by not dealing with poverty and by not dealing with deplorable living conditions on and off reserves in the country. This government is actually contributing to ill health and the spread of disease in the country and it is not doing one thing to build a healthier society over the long term.