Mr. Speaker, was it not Mark Twain who said that we have lies, damn lies and statistics? We can talk statistics all we want but the fact of the matter is that we have a complete policy failure on the part of the Government of Canada, recognized by all health officials across the country and all premiers. Unless we know what we are paying on the service, how can we improve it? The system will simply gobble up new money unless we have an accounting process that actually works.
I want to identify three other policy failures that give the House examples to show that this is not the only one engineered by the would-be future prime minister, the former finance minister. Let us take a look at them: the gun registry, a billion dollar boondoggle, not working; the HRDC fiasco, a billion dollars gone missing, unaccounted for; and the CHST transfer, with billions going in, but the government does not know how much.
Therefore, why will the government not change that system and clearly tell the provinces how much it is putting into the health care--