Madam Speaker, I disagree. I would lay it out this way. We have the responsibility and the opportunity to call Canada Health Infoway before the health committee. As vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Health, I know we can do that, and we have done that. We know where the money is. It is not about counting the beans. It is about making sure there is a performance measure in place so that the money applied to this program is actually used where it should be and in a timely way. There was $1.2 billion set aside back in 2001 and absolutely nothing has come out of that.
As an example, Alberta is probably a year and a half or two years ahead, according to most of the experts, as far as medical records following the patient is concerned. Alberta has applied $15 million to that compared to this $1.2 billion to Infoway and it is on track for having all medical records follow patients by the end of this year, linking physician and patient. Alberta, with one-tenth of the population of Canada, can do that with $15 million.
I am not necessarily an accountant, but I can do the math. When I see that $15 million can achieve this for a tenth of the population of Canada, it means that ten times that amount, which is only $150 million, should be able to achieve it for all of Canada. But there is $1.2 billion that has not been applied to where it needs to go and the government is saying it is going to take not 10 years but 20 years. We had Michael Decter in the health committee saying this should happen not in 20 years, by 2020, but by 2010. In five years from now, all medical records should follow patients.
Why is it not being done? We have no performance measure to guide it and no second set of eyes on this money. That is why we absolutely have to do more than just count the dollars. We have to make sure that the dollars are applied where they need to be applied because lives are being lost as a result of our tardiness.