Mr. Speaker, recently I had the opportunity to pose a question to the Minister of Health with regard to the CHST funding by the federal government.
At the time the debate was about whether or not the transfer was as the provinces had provided the information or in fact as the federal government had presented the information. The House will know that the provinces were suggesting the transfers under CHST were 11 cents to 13 cents in cash, whereas the Minister of Health advised the House very clearly that it was some 33 cents.
I thought it would be useful to try to clarify why there would be this difference. As hon. members know, there continues to be ads on the television which demonstrate a pile of pills representing the provincial government's share of health care funding and a smaller pile for the federal funding. Canadians probably want to know a little bit more about why there is this discrepancy.
It has to do with the change of the rules way back in 1977 when the federal government transferred the ability to tax income to the provincial governments. At the same time as transferring the taxation authority to the provincial governments, the federal government reduced its tax rates so that the net impact on the taxpayer in fact was nil. It was an interesting period of time. If I am not mistaken at that time the transfer of points was 13.5% on personal income tax and 1% on corporate taxation.
As it turns out, Canadians would probably be interested to know that in terms of the value of the cash portion of transfers of CHST funding, which includes health and the tax points or the authorization to collect income tax given to the provinces, that in 2000-01 the provinces will receive a total of some $30.8 billion in the Canadian health and social transfer amount. Of that, $15.3 billion will be tax transfers and $15.5 billion will be transfers in cash. Canadians will have to make up their own minds about whether or not they believe there is some value in tax points.
Before we went to the whole situation of tax points there used to be three separate bins, including a bin for established programs funding as well as post-secondary education. Even then, back in 1977, there was a tax component as well as a cash component. As the value of taxation, as the revenues or the economy of the provinces grew, tax on the growing economy would increase and generate greater dollars of revenue for them, and therefore the cash went down.
The only way that the federal government can enforce the provisions of the Canada Health Act is to have a real cash component so that it can be withheld in the event that a province would decide, as Alberta has, to introduce legislation which would, I believe, violate the Canada Health Act.
I raise the question today and ask the parliamentary secretary if he understands that those are the details and that the real truth is that the federal government contributes, in the form of transfers to the provinces, regardless of what form they take, 33 cents of every health care dollar.