Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was not going to do a Member's statement today, but I have been a little motivated here I guess to speak to the quality of information that we are receiving on this side of the House and it is certainly a theme that I have been discussing earlier in the session.
We did not seem to get much in the way of Ministers' statements in this session until today when we get a veritable wheelbarrow full of them, and a couple of my colleagues have already commented on this, Mr. Speaker. The difficulty here is that the information we are seeking needs to be timely, it needs to be accurate and it needs to be relevant or we cannot offer the public what they need, and that is a chance to scrutinize the information that our government is providing, Mr. Speaker.
Clearly we need to know how the government is tackling the major issues of the day. If I go through the Ministers' statements, and I will just take the Health Minister's statement first, Mr. Speaker, he talks about the commitment he has made to provide regular reporting on our progress. He is tabling a report, which is great and I will take a look at that, but unfortunately we are not going to have much time to question the Minister in this session now because we are almost on our way out the door. He says that this plan will speak to the recruitment and retention plan, good to see it, but that will deal with immediate and longer term staffing shortages. With all due respect, Mr. Speaker, immediate was about two months ago.
If I look at the fiscal update that we have been clamouring for on this side of the House for the last couple of weeks, and let me be clear, Mr. Speaker, the fiscal update is simply a snapshot of where we are at a time -- a time which looks to me like we have been here for the last few months, and I cannot understand why we did not get this information earlier. The convention has been that every time this House sits we get a fiscal update and, as I have said before, there is no expectation that the Finance Minister has all the answers or has the detailed plan all worked out by the time he comes to the public, but we think it is only fair that we are forthright and honest about our fiscal situation.
Mr. Speaker, the last fiscal update indicated we had a deficit of $12 million for 2002-2003. It is now $104 million. I can tell you that if this was the private sector and you provided no guidance going forward, and then came out with earnings that absolutely disappointed like this, your stock would tank, Mr. Speaker. That is the kind of thing that I think this government fails to grasp.
I look at the devolution negotiations update that we received, Mr. Speaker, and it speaks to the process which commenced on September 26th, a month ago. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.