--Grant Devine runs in Souris—Moose Mountain, he should remember the 16 convictions. I think something like 11 people ended up in jail under the Conservatives in Saskatchewan.
What we are dealing with here today is the pension investments. As far as putting dollars into private health care, it is not the answer. We should have invested into the services that were needed. I can say that living in northern Manitoba I am quite aware of us not having all the services available in the north that they have in the south. We try to make the most cost effective utilization of the dollars that we have and try to make it work.
Under the New Democratic government in Manitoba now, we have been able to address some of the issues and improve the services, even to the point of where if there are spaces available in operating rooms in the north, they will actually bring people from the south to try to make the best utilization of services and making those services available to everyone.
It is not a perfect system and the reason the system got so bad throughout the nation, including B.C., was the result of numerous cuts over a length of time by the Liberal government under the present Prime Minister when he as finance minister. That was the start of it.
I am not suggesting that putting money into the system is the only answer, because it is not. However, way back in the early days when suggestions were being made on how to approach medicare, if the government of the day had listened to the NDP to set up community clinics, we would have had the preventive medicine in place and we would not be in some of the situations we are in now.