If he is the one; if that is what the Liberal Party faithful want.
The worst thing that could happen to us is for the Romanow report to become government policy. What does it want, this report? For there to be a single health system with the Canadian government in the driver's seat. The member for LaSalle—Émard will need to state whether or not he believes in this logic. As for ourselves, we do not.
We believe that the federal government has cut $42 billion in all, and the one who needs to plead mea culpa on this is the member for LaSalle—Émard. The total cuts to the provinces amount to $42 billion, whereas we know that, year in and year out for the foreseeable future, the health care budget will increase by 5%.
The inconsistency here is obvious. Here we have a highly centralist report telling the provinces, “You are going to have to report to the bureaucrats, to the employees of the federal government. You are going to let us set up a national pharmacare plan. You are going to let us set up a whole service relating to primary care. You are going to let us require accountability from you”. Yet most of the responsibility for the situation the provinces are in lies with the federal government.
Even if the Romanow recommendation on restoring transfer payments were followed, all members of this House—and I invite the NDP members not to lose sight of this—must not forget that, in the best possible scenario, the federal government will not put in more than 25% of the funds needed to run the health care system.