Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Dauphin—Swan River for his remarks and the very interesting readings he made.
I found it interesting that he talked about the need for more money in the health care system. Certainly the government has restored all the transfers. We could go over the same old stuff. No matter how often we say it, the opposition parties will say that we have not, but in fact the CHST has been totally restored to the 1993 levels.
We had to reduce the federal transfers to eliminate a $42 billion deficit. In fact if we had not dealt with federal transfers which consisted of something in the order of 40% of our total federal budget, it would have been very difficult if not impossible for us to eliminate the deficit completely. We did reduce the transfers but they have now been completely restored.
Let me give the example of the province of Ontario. The Ontario government under Mike Harris reduced income taxes by 30%. Reducing taxes is another good agenda item. We have been doing more of that now that we have topped up health care. If we look at the Harris Conservative government in Ontario, the first reduction in taxes it made was 30% and then it has gone on since then. If the Ontario government had reduced taxes by 25% instead of 30%, just five percentage points, it could have totally restored and topped up the federal transfer reductions that the government passed on to the province of Ontario.
When we talk about where the priorities are, rather than move from 30% tax cuts to 25%, the province of Ontario decided to let health care slide somewhat. Now it is coming to us and saying that we should be putting more money back in when it is actually still sitting on money that we gave it last year which has earned interest. About half a billion dollars is still sitting there not being utilized.
I would ask the member to reflect on that and maybe he could comment on it.