Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Chatham-Kent—Essex mentioned that there was an escalator clause put in the health budget. I wonder if he could expand on that clause and on some of the amounts that were mentioned by him.
The member mentioned a few big dollar amounts and I think Canadians need to know exactly how much money we are talking about. We are not talking about tens of thousands of dollars. We are talking about millions, hundreds of millions and, indeed, billions of dollars that this new government intends to spend in the health care system to improve not only the lot of all Canadians but the times they have to wait, times that under the previous government doubled.
As the hon. member for Chatham-Kent—Essex mentioned, the health minister today notified the House of the historic agreement to reduce wait times for those first nations people who need testing for diabetes. He previously announced the prenatal program that my hon. colleague mentioned just a few minutes ago.
I wonder if the hon. member would just mention what the 6% escalator clause means and give some of the other figures that he was so graciously able to provide the House.