Thank you, Madam Chair. Just quickly, we’ve had this discussion before and there are two basic approaches that I’ve lived through in government. In the old days your current year budget was always based on how much you spent the previous year. Government would spend all their money and at year end they would drive up their budgets and get funding starting that year based on that figure. It was an unsustainable pattern of constant, uncontrollable growth. The Legislature said this is not the way to do business, we cannot control government expenditures, we do not have enough say. So we’re going to set these tough, lean budgets and if they want more money, they’re going to have to come back and justify it to the Legislature as a way to make sure that there was
debate and control, and that we had that kind of say over how the taxpayers’ dollars are being spent. Now there’s from some Members a push to just go back and whatever they spend, we’ll give it to them and if they spend more, we’ll just keep adding it to the budget. We don’t have the oversight. We won’t have it here except once here, when we do the main estimates. That is an important discussion because our cost to government is not getting any cheaper. What is the most appropriate way to get checks and balances as we go forward? What involvement does this Legislature want? Once a year at main estimates and you hope the numbers are right or you come back and justify.
I believe the Minister of Health would like to make a comment, if that’s okay.