Madam Speaker, I would like to talk a bit and then ask the hon. member a question about the health component of this budget.
Before the budget came down I had an opportunity in my own riding to sit down with a number of health care professionals. I try to do this on a regular basis with focus groups within my riding to get a sense of where they are coming from.
If anybody knows the state of the health care system in Canada right now it is surely those people who are on the front lines, the doctors, the nurses, the people who run our hospitals particularly. One of the questions I asked was if in the next budget the government puts a lot of money back into the system would this necessarily fix the system. I have to say that those people were very skeptical about an infusion of money going back into the system that would in some way, shape or form fix the sad state of health care in this country.
I went back to those same people after the budget and I asked would this $11.5 billion that the Liberal government intends to put back into this budget over the next five years do what we hope it will do, fix the health care system. These people had not changed their minds. I do not think they are fooled by the rhetoric of the government in trying to make it appear that somehow it is now the saviour of health care by putting this kind of money back into the system.
Does the member think that putting this kind of money back into the health care system will fix the system when indeed his government is responsible for taking $20.4 billion out of the health care system in the last five years and creating the problem we are in today?