Madam Chair, there are many, including probably some provinces who would not accept Mr. Romanow's numbers because they do not think it is enough. The numbers game is not really that useful to us in terms of understanding what we want our health care system to be; what are our objectives for our health care system; how do we reach those objectives; what do we need to do; what is the money required to achieve those objectives?
People can argue about whether we have exactly the right amount of money or whether it is too little. My guess is very few people would argue that it is too much, except maybe some in the Alliance Party, I do not know. I take the point that there are very few who would argue that it is too much.
Having said that, we think $34.8 billion is an awful lot of money, new money over the next five years. Money is not the only answer. There would never be enough money for health care without structural change. What we have to do is ensure structural change to make the changes that are necessary to sustain the system. There will come a point when Canadians ask if we have put enough money into the health care system. What percentage of GDP should a province or a nation be providing for health care? Those are legitimate questions. It is not only about the money.
We have put a lot of new money in over the next five years. Let us see what we get for that. I think that is the question Canadians are asking. The Canadians I talk to ask me “How much money was put in? How much money do we spend? Are we getting better health outcomes and if not, why not?”
I do not think it is about more money. Canadians are very skeptical about whether we need to put more money into the system. They want to know how the money presently in the system is being used and what they get for it. Those are really important questions. They want to know whether there is waste and inefficiency and what we can do to restructure the system before they put more of their hard-earned dollars into the system. Those are the questions we should be asking.