Yes, I did give it back. I had no choice but to give it back for a number of reasons because I was still working for them at that time.
This is a very serious problem. It goes back to 1972. How much was a dollar worth in 1972 compared to 2002? I do not think anyone has brought that point up so far. If we translate a dollar that was overpaid in 1972 into a dollar today, it would be closer to $4. That would be absolutely wrong.
The hon. gentleman who answered a question from one of my colleagues talked about sharing and equalization. I am from the west, from Saskatchewan. I can proudly stand and say I know what I am talking about when it comes to sharing equally such things as heritage grants, foundation money and cultural grants. It is not there. We can prove it year in and year out. There is no sharing.
I will use the province closest to mine, Manitoba, to explain what would happen. An actuary showed me how to work this out. He used the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. He took their populations, which are relatively the same and their demographics and moved them up the scale. He took the spiraling cost of drugs and moved that up the scale. He took the cost of health care and moved it up the scale, but he left the federal grant of 12% to hospitals the same. Within a generation under the same conditions that exist right now, 100% of Manitoba's and Saskatchewan's budgets would go to health care.
If Manitoba was asked to return the $408 million accumulated since 1972, in a health care system like the one in my province which is foundering, all that would do is make a bad situation worse. We should never forget that health care delivery in Canada was based on the fact that the federal government would always contribute 50%, not 12%. The amounts of money that have been overpaid are far less than if the government was living up to its agreement of 50% toward health care. When we look at it in that way, the old adage is, a promise made is a debt unpaid.
There are two incidents which happened with AIDA. AIDA was a program designed to help the farmers who were destitute. I could cite 100 cases where farmers finally got relief, sometimes up to $50,000 and sometimes only $500 or $600, and then three weeks later they received a letter saying “We have calculated this incorrectly. Please return the money”.
One case that will always be in my mind as long as I live involved a lady who drove daily to Regina where her husband was dying from cancer. I worked on the case for her. Although she lived 200 miles away, I knew her. She received a total of $1,800 from AIDA. Two weeks later the phone rang in my office and she was in tears. A lot of the AIDA accounts had been miscalculated and she had been asked to repay $1,800.
To ask Manitoba to return $408 million to the federal coffers right now is asking it to make very severe cuts. The one place it would have to cut is health care and it is at a bare minimum right now.
The auditor general has told us that something like $7.1 billion or $7.2 billion has been set aside for foundations. Maybe the government could be human and instead of doing what it has previously done with foundation grants it could look at what is owing and remedy the situation. Even though the government may not ask for it all back, maybe it could say that in view of the programming and in view of the time when it started in 1972, it will give the provinces some consideration. That is what a government with a heart, a government that really cared about people would do.
If someone who owed me money was destitute, I would tell the person that I would take another look at the situation. That is what we on this side of the House are asking the government to do. We are asking the government to take another look at its own budget for this year. We are asking it to take another look at its foundation grants and all of the other grants it hands out across Canada.
I ask government members to ask themselves if they are doing the right thing. Is this the time for the government to say to the provinces “We made the mistake so now pay up”? I know some of the people opposite very well and I do not think the majority of them have that kind of heart. Intrinsically, I do not think they really want to do this. Let us give this some consideration.