Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the hon. member's comments and I would like to pose two questions.
First, I listened to his comments about the Romanow commission and the fact that the member had worked with his constituents and had feedback. It seems to me that in this report Mr. Romanow came to two very critical conclusions. One is that there must be public financing for health care services in Canada, and the second is that there must be public delivery. I think this is something that Canadians are very concerned about. There are issues around the length of time that it takes to go through diagnostic services and so on, but I think Mr. Romanow provided a blueprint and really strengthened the values that are there. Would the member agree that the public delivery of health care services is something that is very important in stopping this creeping privatization?
Second, in terms of defence spending and the report he refers to, which I believe is the one from the Polaris Institute that came out yesterday, he may be disappointed because it dares to go against the general prevailing view of just throwing more money at defence. I think that what the report said, and I will add that the author, Steven Staples, is a very credible person, is that Canada's defence policy is still rooted in the cold war and that we have made all kinds of expenditures like, for example, $750 million on a bunch of used subs, that really do not serve us today in terms of Canada's contemporary needs around defence.
It seems to me that this report is actually providing a very important perspective that we do not hear very often, because there is a very strong mainstream view from the defence department, from the Liberal government, and from retired generals and so on who simply want to put more money into defence. I would ask the member to reflect on the fact that it has more to do with priorities for where that money goes.