Mr. Speaker, on the hon. member's comment, there was a politician on the western end of Prince Edward Island called the great west wind. Robert Campbell was his name. He was an MLA for over 30 years. Compared to him I am just a little breeze.
It is really criminal what the provincial governments are doing with their advertising. They are spending millions of dollars to mislead and misinform the Canadian people. They say that we are only spending 14% on health care costs, when we had committed to spending 50% right across the board. All these facts are basically untrue. It is misinformation and disinformation in an attempt to get the federal government to transfer additional dollars. They are not prepared to wait for the Romanow report so we can see exactly what is required in a revamped medicare system for Canada. They are trying to pre-empt the report. They think that as long as we transfer more money to them, this will solve all their problems, which is never the case.
We put $2 billion into the hospital equipment fund a number of years ago, then we found out that instead of buying equipment for the hospitals in question, the provinces spent it on lawnmowers, trees and all sorts of things that had nothing to do with hospital equipment. This was being done right across the country. Some provinces had put the money in the bank and were collecting interest on it.
One wonders where the emergencies are, when the provinces react in a very undisciplined way with the money that we do transfer to them.