Because hon. members opposite have memory loss from time to time.
This will bring our commitment to health care renewal to $36.8 billion. In the context of announcing that, the Prime Minister reiterated that he would like to meet with the provincial premiers in the summer to work out how health care will be sustainable over the short, medium and long term.
Clearly the government's commitments in health care are not sustainable. Of all our program spending, that money is going in at twice the rate of the growth in the economy. If the economy is growing at 4% and commitments are running at 8%, over the short, medium and long term that is not a sustainable position. I am hoping, as is the Minister of Finance, that the Prime Minister and the premiers will work out a sustainable path going forward.
In addition, the budget attempted to respond to the SARS outbreak, which showed some limitations in our public health care system. The budget takes this action by providing funding to improve Canada's readiness to deal with public health emergencies. It authorizes $400 million in payments to a trust to be provided to the provinces and territories over three years.
Of this amount, $300 million is targeted for a national immunization strategy. In my community that has been particularly well received. We were one of the sites of SARS. It was a very major strain on our hospitals and the people who worked in our hospitals. The new funding will build on the $45 million provided in the 2003 budget to improve the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, enhance coordination and efficiency in immunization procurement, and ensure better information on immunization coverage rates within Canada.
The $300 million will support the introduction of new and recommended childhood and adolescent vaccines as proposed by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization. That advisory committee has recommended the introduction of the meningococcal conjugate vaccine, pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, varicella, which is the chicken pox vaccine, and acellular pertussis booster for all adolescents.
The other portion, $100 million, will relieve stresses on provincial and territorial health care systems that were identified during the SARS outbreak. It will help the provinces and territories address their gaps in the public health capacities by supporting frontline activities, specific health protection and disease prevention programs.
The budget has measures to ensure that the public health system has the information technology systems needed to deal with future public health outbreaks or epidemics. Specifically, the bill authorizes the payment of $100 million to Canada Health Infoway for its use to allow the provinces and territories to invest in software and hardware with the goal of assessing, developing and implementing a high quality, real time public health surveillance system.
When I did a tour of our local hospital the CEO pointed out that when an assessment was done on the $3.5 million that ended up in our local hospital, one of the weaknesses was that one machine could not communicate with another machine, which could not communicate with another central machine. I hope that this money will assist doctors and nurses and all of the other health professionals to communicate in real time so that information is readily available wherever they go.
The equalization program is renewed for a further five years. It has a very complicated formula involving 30-odd collection points of tax information over 10 provinces and each province has its unique interest. It is a very difficult formula. It is renewed and the objective is to do five year renewals.
The key changes include tax base changes, including a fundamental redesign of the property tax base. There is the introduction of a smoothing mechanism. Also, given the transition to the new system, there are payments of $150 million. The changes will mean an additional $1.5 billion over five years.
I see that my time is up. In closing, I recommend to hon. members opposite that they support Bill C-30.