Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is accusing me of not reading, but obviously she was not listening. One of the cornerstones of our platform will be the sixth principle of the Canada Health Act: secure funding so that provinces, even Alberta, even B.C., will know where they are down the road, so that they can plan.
Running a government or a country is no different from running one's own family or business. Mr. Speaker, you have been in business. You have a number of businesses on the go now, I think. You are an entrepreneur. You take risks. You do not get out of bed in the morning without some kind of plan as to where you are going or how you are going to do it. People must have a plan no matter how successful their business, no matter if the cash is flowing in by the barrel or the truckload. Mr. Speaker, you must have a plan for how you are going to reinvest or for where you are going. You just do not simply hand out money and think that it is going to work.
That is what the government is doing in this case. A deathbed reprieve is what it is looking for. “Here is the cash, do not get in my way, there is an election coming” is exactly what the Prime Minister is saying. He is saying “Just get lost, here is the money, do not make a peep. We can change it all tomorrow, but we are getting ready for an election and we do not want to talk about it. Take the money and run”. That is exactly what the government is doing.
I have a feeling that it is not going to work. Canadians are a bit too smart for that. As I said earlier, the Canadian people were duped once by red book one, twice by red book two, and the cut, paste and crazy glue approach to red book three is not going to work.