Mr. Speaker, my colleague commented in her speech about the gap between the annual increase in the Canada health transfer of 6% a year and what the provinces are actually spending.
Her province of B.C. is an example. I just checked the report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information entitled “National Health Expenditure Trends, 1975 to 2014”, which says that B.C. only increased its health care spending by 3.2% in 2011, 4.2% in 2012, 2% in 2013, and only 1.8% in 2014. There is a similar trend in Ontario over that same time frame. It was 2.5% in 2011, 1.9% in 2012, 1.6% in 2013, and 1.6% in 2014.
Given all of the funds that we are providing through the Canada health transfer, why are the provinces not necessarily spending those funds on health care?