Mr. Speaker, I am not sure what ghosts the Prime Minister sees in the chamber here, but I hope he does not end up like Ebenezer Scrooge, some day confronting a ghost that has much to tell him about what he should have done when he was Prime Minister.
I am happy to hear the Prime Minister say what he said about the Romanow report, but I do not think he actually said, and we will have to check the blues, “I intend to cover the Romanow gap”. Yes, the report does have to be taken in its entirety.
I would hope that the Prime Minister would pay attention to that part of the report which is particularly praiseworthy of non-profit public health care and talks about how the privatization of health care is not a good idea. It is not enough for the Prime Minister to just get up and say that we are going to abide by the Canada Health Act because the Canada Health Act was not designed to deal with that issue and I am sure the Prime Minister knows that. We need to have a debate in this country, not just about the Canada Health Act because that is not good enough. If we actually want to stop the privatization of our health care system, then we may need to amend the Canada Health Act, or go beyond the Canada Health Act in some way. It would be interesting to know the Prime Minister's views on that.
I take his point about the Canada corps. I hope that we are going to learn more about that in the days to come. Perhaps that could be an initiative that all would want to support. We will have to know more about it.
The five per cent on research and development is about research and development. It is not a commitment to development assistance per se, and so our criticism still stands.