Mr. Speaker, as usual the member for Dartmouth has raised a very salient point on this issue. She is certainly correct in suggesting that the have not provinces, including the province that we share, our home province of Nova Scotia, have been disproportionately affected by the former finance minister and his government's very cruel cuts to the CHST transfers.
We know now that, as with health care, as with democratic deficit and as with other positions, the Janus faced former finance minister is now in favour of putting money back into health care and trying to distance himself from the record with which he was associated for over nine years.
In short, my hon. colleague is correct. The Progressive Conservative Party would look at essentially following Romanow's recommendations to reassess the funding formula to see that the poorer provinces are not disproportionately affected by the cuts that have been handed down arbitrarily by the government. There is a necessity to revisit the needs and, if I could go so far as to say, the priorities.
Those priorities are different from time to time. Some provinces are in need of equipment and some are in need of personnel. Some are in need of more palliative care programs and some want to put more money into prevention.
I would suggest, in keeping with the motion that is before the House, that those provinces be given the latitude within the parameters of the Canada Health Act to decide those priorities without the specific interventions and strings tied to the financing as proposed in essence by the Romanow commission.
There is a need to look at some of the recommendations in the Romanow report but we do not want to be in a vacuum when we make our final determinations. The key is to put the money back. The money that was taken out is nowhere near the equivalent that is being suggested will be returned.