Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed my colleague's remarks. I particularly appreciated the way he focused on the budget and his views of it, unlike his colleague who spoke previously, where I really did not hear the budget mentioned.
I think he knows that I share his views about education. I was very pleased about the way he elaborated on how education affects all of our society. For example, the evidence shows that the better educated people are, the more healthy they are. The evidence shows that even if we could set up a perfect health system now, we can only maintain it by educating our people to make it sustainable over a period of time. He knows these things, and he gave some examples.
I thought I heard him say that the federal government only provides 16% of the funding for health care. I could not help but notice this. On page 94 of the budget document, referring to the year 2003-04, it points out that the federal government transfers $14 billion to the provinces for health care. In tax transfers it provides another $10 billion for health care. Through the equalization payments, it is estimated that $3 billion is used by the provinces for health care. Direct federal spending and tax measures worth $6 billion of support for first nations health, Inuit and veterans' health, employment insurance health, health protection and public health featured very large in the budget. Therefore, federal expenditures for health are approximately $34 billion, or 40% of the $85 billion spent by governments on publicly funded health care in Canada.
Could my colleague address the difference between his 16% and the 40% which is in the budget.