My apologies, Mr. Speaker. I should not have said those things.
I would like to draw a picture for the House. I was watching not long ago a debate in the United States Congress. One of the nice things is that when members of congress give their speeches they can actually use charts, and they often do. Their speakers go to the front of the chamber, they speak from the podium and beside them they have these big graphs if they are talking about budgets. I wish we could do that here. Having taught mathematics and computing for 31 years, I love the ability to use visuals, because it helps people to understand. However, we cannot use props of any kind here. We cannot display the Canadian flag. We cannot use any props at all. All we can do is gesture with our hands and hopefully communicate in that way.
I will build a graph for hon. members, gesturing with my hands, to show what the Liberal government is communicating to the people versus what the truth is. This is how it is doing it.
When government members brought in this health care budget they said that they should put about $2 billion a year back into the budget. That seemed like a good number. Then somebody in the back room said that in the last five years they had taken out $20 billion and if they put $2 billion back the Canadian people would complain. They would say it is not good enough. Government members had to do better.
One of the gurus in the back row at their meeting said he could solve that by multiplying it by five. However, they did not have that much money to put into the health care budget. According to the guru that did not matter. They would just do it over five years. That way they could multiply it by five and it would be $10 billion instead of $2 billion.
This budget is an annual budget. Every year the Minister of Finance is required by law to stand in this place to declare for Canadians the government's plan of fiscal arrangements for the following year. To enter five years into it is very, very dishonest. It really is. It does not communicate.
I want members to visualize a graph. On the bottom of the graph we have 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003, for a total of five years.
In 1999 the government is increasing the payments it is making for the health and social transfer. It is putting in $2 billion. The graph is increased by $2 billion from what it would have been if there were no changes.
It has a plan for the next year, which it has no business even talking about it. It has nothing to do with this year's budget. It is a projection for years two, three, four and five to follow. In the next year there is no change at all, but it is still $2 billion above what it would have been if it had not changed it. Then it is being increased by half a billion. In the next year there is no change and in the next year there is no change.
By putting $2 billion a year into the budget for two years and then increasing that by half a billion in the following year, which is the plan, it adds up all of those payments for five years and says they come to $10.5 billion.
What did the press release say? It said that this is a health care budget, that it will put $10.5 billion into health care. That is garbage. I cannot use that word. It is not accurate. Can I say that? It is not accurate. It is garbage. It is a miscommunication. It tells Canadians “We are doing this” when in fact they are doing that. It is a deceptive way of communicating with the Canadian people.
Part of Bill C-71 concerns the implementation of the money. The government wants everybody to believe that it is doing so great and that it is so wonderful. It just ain't so.