Mr. Speaker, this Extended Health Benefits Program is not new. It’s something that every government grapples with. We’re not inventing a new wheel here. We look at what is available across the country. We looked at what’s the use of it.
Mr. Speaker, we have a proposal before us that would cover the vast majority of seniors, the vast majority of the population who need support from us. We are asking that those of us, and that includes me and many other people who are going to be seniors one day and who hope to be financially better off, that we make our contribution so that we help those seniors down the road and our younger folks, university students or newly starting a job, a single mother with kids, that they get the basic care that they do not get right now. I
believe, at the end of the day, government has a responsibility and the role to look after the poor first, look after the most vulnerable first. We will look after seniors and we will look after everybody who needs us, but no government can afford to do extended health benefits with no questions asked and pay for supplementary health benefits for somebody who’s making two, three, four, five hundred thousand a year. The fact of the matter is we have those people. Thank you.