Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Broadview—Greenwood.
I am very happy to engage in this debate dealing with health care spending by the federal government and the provinces. It seems to me that the problem is the whole issue of accountability. To the people who are in their living rooms watching this debate and who are concerned about the health care issue, it is appropriate for us to ask not about whether it is new money we need, but how the money was spent in the past. We can judge the sincerity of secondary levels of governments by how they are spending the actual moneys we transfer to them.
A number of people have mentioned the report on what the province of Quebec did with some of its money. It has taken it out of the account we provided last year and invested $841 million in Quebec savings bonds and Hydro Quebec. It has earned something like $16 million in interest. The point is the money was not spent on health care.
We have had a lot of complaints from the province of Ontario, and Mr. Harris in particular, that it needs more money because the money provided in the last federal budget was not adequate. Ontario is pounding on the table and is really upset because it did not get enough money. It is very appropriate that we sit down and ask what the province of Ontario did with the money it already had.
I am drawing my information not from my notes but from the Ontario government's budget book, pages 38 and 55 and from its third quarter fiscal results dated February 4, 2000. Looking through those pages I see that of the $3.5 billion allocation that was made in fiscal year 1999-2000, the province of Ontario's share was $1.323 billion. I also see in the same books that the province of Ontario drew down $755 million on that account. For those people who are watching the debate, it is very hard to relate billions and millions when most of us have a hard time finding $25 to put some gas in our tank. It does not buy very much today.
Getting back to the equation, $1.323 billion was transferred to Ontario and it drew down $755 million, which left a balance of $568 million. Of the money we gave it last year, $568 million has remained unspent.
I do not know if, like the province of Quebec, Ontario has invested it in securities and is earning interest on it. The fact is that money is still sitting there. It has not spent it at all. The important part is $755 million went into the Ontario government coffers.
In addition to the $755 million of new money, we had increased our normal allotment under the CHST by $190 million to the province of Ontario. To get all my figures together, $190 million plus the $755 million comes to $945 million. That is $945 million of new money that went to the province of Ontario in fiscal year 1999-2000.
The question is what did the province of Ontario do with this new money? The opposition party is saying it wants more money but what did Ontario do with the money it received?
I have looked through the pages of the Ontario government expenditures. What have I discovered? I have discovered that the new spending on health care for the province of Ontario for the 1999-2000 fiscal year was $320 million.
Think about that. The federal government put the money in a trust account. Ontario took $755 million out of the trust account. We gave Ontario another $190 million of new money. It had $945 million of new money. How much new money did it spend on health care? Only $320 million. The difference is $625 million that the federal government transferred to the province of Ontario that it did not spend on health care.
When thinking of a trust account, what is the concept of trust? We put money in trust and say, “We put it in trust for you and we trust you as a provincial government to spend it on your people and spend it for its original intention which is health care”. What did the province of Ontario do? Ontario withdrew this money in trust, $755 million, added it to another $190 million in new money that we gave, and only spent $320 million in new dollars.
There is $625 million missing, $625 million of Canadian taxpayers' money that was transferred to the province of Ontario to undertake new spending in health care that never happened.
We talk about accountability in government. This is the problem with this whole debate. People blame us for the health care system but we do not control how the money is being spent. This is a clear example. Mr. Harris has the audacity to shout all over the land today, “We need more money. We did not get enough money from you guys”, when in fact the province of Ontario got $625 million new dollars which it stuck in its back pocket and never spent on the people of Ontario.
If that were not enough, in its fiscal estimates the province of Ontario now anticipates an additional $1 billion surplus this fiscal year. Is that not an amazing thing. There is $625 million seemingly missing and the province of Ontario now has a $1 billion surplus, a surplus $1 billion larger than it was going to have in the first place. What did the province of Ontario do with this money? I do not know.
We do know the province of Ontario spent $4.7 billion in tax cuts. Perhaps that is what the Ontario government did with it. We know that it has done all kinds of other spending. Worse than that we know it also raised its deficit by $20 billion. Those people in Ontario are spending money like drunken sailors, but it is not going into the health care system.
Members of the opposition have been saying that only 3 cents went to health care.