Mr. Speaker, the word “credibility” coming from the Conservative government is very funny indeed.
Prior to my becoming a member of Parliament in 1993, I worked very closely with the Canadian Medical Association on this issue. One of the things that we kept protesting against was the last Conservative government's gutting of transfers to the provinces that would have kept health care afloat. It was years of the last Conservative government's gutting of the cash transfers that brought us to this point.
When the Liberal government came into power in 1993, first and foremost, we had to pay off the deficit of $43 billion. We did not gut any health care. We had to pick up the slack. What the member does not obviously understand, and I accept that he probably does not have any understanding of the health care system, is that the result of the Conservatives' cutting and cutting and cutting of the health care transfers over the years led to an increase in wait times. We were left holding the bag that was left by the former Conservative government. We infused over $75 billion of cash in one form or another to the provinces, the most recent being the $41.3 billion that we put in. Prior to that we put in $24 billion.
We were the government that set up the Romanow commission. We were prepared to put money in to solve this problem and to really put teeth into it.