Madam Speaker, it has increased and we are contributing one-third of all public spending; but let me go beyond money to the second part of the equation which is the changes that are required.
The leader of the New Democratic Party talks about problems in emergency rooms. If she will go there as I have done and speak to the people who run hospitals, who run emergency rooms, and ask them why, they will give two reasons. The first reason is that family physicians, as hard as they work, cannot be on duty 24 hours a day. If we call them when their offices are closed there will be a tape machine saying go to emergency. That way we get too many people at the emergency department who ought to be served in a different way in another place.
The second reason is that there are people on stretchers in emergency departments waiting for admission to hospital who should be upstairs in beds and cannot go there. The beds upstairs are taken by people who should be moved out of hospital into home and community care, which does not exist. If we want to resolve the problems with emergency rooms and stop ambulances being turned away, we will buy into the agenda of the provincial ministers of health, which I support, to change primary care and to add home and community care where it is needed across the country.