Mr. Speaker, I think the issue is the provinces all have agreed that this is necessary. There was no club to their heads. Even Quebec signed a health accord saying it was extremely important that people understand what it is for.
Constitutionally, actually it was only hospitals that were the provincial responsibility. There has always been an agreement that health care is a joint responsibility in terms of what we do federally, research and prevention and all of those things.
What is imperative is that throwing money at problems without any accountability would not be acceptable to any taxpayer or any business person. We are saying there has to be a set of objectives and we will then figure out what the performance indicators are, what are the kinds of things that the various sectors can agree on as to what is acceptable.
I agree that you cannot start measuring things unless you have an ability to remedy the things that are not working properly. A 1995 document from the University of Ottawa and Queen's University made it clear that if we moved to what is in the social union, best practices, we would be saving $7 billion a year in health care.
We are doing too many unnecessary surgeries. We are giving antibiotics for colds. We are doing way too many things that are totally ineffective. We are ordering tons of laboratory tests that have been outdated for 20 years.
We need a way to help the provinces share best practices and help them save money to be able to provide exemplary and optimal patient care. This is not going to be if we keep allowing money to go places without the kind of scrutiny and accountability Canadians expect.
I am thrilled that these two things have come together. It is amazing that the hon. member would say that there was a club to the heads of the provincial premiers. They all willingly signed it.
The social union talks about transparency. It talks about best practices. It talks about accountability. It talks about involving Canadians in setting their social priorities. Hopefully at the end of the turf war of we are going to set some objectives and promise Canadians that they are going to happen together. It is the beginning of trying to get some sense out of this very complex federalism.
There were experts present at our town hall meeting last week. The Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs was fabulous in explaining that fact and compared this to other countries. For example in the United States, unless the states sign on to lowering the driver's age they do not get any money for highways. We could not pull that off in Canada if we tried. Canadians would not want that kind of power for the central government.
There is also huge power for the provincial premiers. We have an interesting complex tug in terms of tension. This has been a brilliant piece of work that a lot of us were very worried about before. It is thrilling to actually see this work and now be able to implement things, to put the meat on the bones of the social union, get these sectoral agreements going, start setting objectives and actually give Canadians a bang for their buck.