Mr. Chairman, I listened with great interest to the minister's remarks. In particular, I was struck with the word renewal in regard to our health care system. I understand that Mr. Romanow is going across this country and I think many people have great hopes of what he will come out with in his report next November. We certainly appreciated the opportunity to dialogue with him last week when we discussed health care with him.
What he is doing is very important and I am not trying to diminish it, but when we start talking about renewal it sort of scares me because I do not believe our health care needs renewal. I believe our health care needs support, it needs foresight and it needs leadership, all of which we have seen such a tremendous lack of over the last year.
It really disturbs me when I see what has happened to the number one priority of this country, which is health care. I agree with the minister when she at least acknowledges that. That is the way the electorate sees health care. This is very important and it is very important that we look at some of the challenges coming down the road in health care. I will mention that a little bit later in my remarks, but my question for the minister comes to the issue of the billion dollars and what happened in the accord of 2000.
In the accord of 2000, there was $1 billion for medical equipment. We just have had reports about it. I have been following this all spring, actually, and have been waiting for the minister to come forward or for the figures to come forward at the end of the fiscal year so that we would know how the money was actually being spent. Now we see that almost half that money, $486 million, is unaccounted for.
Some of the money was spent inappropriately. Some of it was put into what not many people would see as high tech equipment, such as lawn mowers, sewing machines, icemakers and so on. I am wondering if the minister would like to comment on the lack of accountability in giving that money to the provinces and not watching where it went.