Mr. Speaker, it is ironic the minister would keep emphasizing the term “lead us down the path”. It seems very apropos.
The war on cancer should not have to depend on the efforts of a heroic young man who lost his leg and eventually his life to cancer. It should depend on the government and on Parliament. The strategy of the Liberals reminds me of a brush fire where the responsible agency, in trying to save money, instead of sending the equipment and manpower necessary to put out that fire, sends one person with a small extinguisher. Eventually they lose control and lose a lot of forest land, jobs and taxes and create problems for the environment instead of doing the job right upfront.
I would be interested to know if the government has ever done a cost benefit analysis. For example, if it put in large sums of money, what benefit would it get in terms of savings to the health care system, lost wages, taxation and all the other things that come up?
In terms of what money is available, recently the government came out with a budget and said, “This is all we have”, yet a few short weeks later, the Liberals managed to find another $4.6 billion. I will not even go into whether or not the things they targeted with the additional money were really wonderful, but they had $4.6 billion, presumably, to make this commitment. If they took a large part of that and instead of talking about putting hundreds of millions of dollars or even a few million, and I think the minister said an additional $60 million, the figures I have seen lead me to believe that if we would invest hundreds of millions, we would save in the long run hundreds of billions.
Has a cost strategy analysis every been done? If so, why does the government not take a serious look at making a genuine commitment to a real war on the health problems of the citizens of this country and deal with it once and for all for net saving and also for quality of life?