Madam Speaker, one of the reasons I am a proud New Democrat is that the New Democratic Party is the party that invented and pioneered public health care. We did it in the 1940s in Saskatchewan, and of course, the NDP played an instrumental role in the 1960s working with the Liberal government of Prime Minister Pearson to create the structure of today's health care system.
At the time, the original bargain for health care was a 50-50 split between the federal government and the provinces. Since then, however, successive federal underfunding has resulted in the situation we have today where the federal government pays only about 22% of the total health care bill.
Also, of course, the Harper government capped federal health care spending at 3% in 2017. The Liberals promised to address that, and instead, they adopted it. The result is that we have health care costs growing at 5.4% in this country and federal funding growing at 3%. Canadians can do the math. There is only one recipe and that is for long-term fiscal disaster and cuts.
Does my hon. colleague not agree that the federal government should reverse the long-term slide in federal funding and start reversing it so the federal government can start to honour its original commitment of paying half the cost of health care in this country, as originally promised?