Thank you, Madam Chair. On a comparative basis if you look across the country, let’s pick one of my favourite provinces just given her size and the magnitude and complexity of the problems they’re dealing with, they’re spending over 45 cents on every dollar on health alone. In this jurisdiction we’re spending about 34 cents of every dollar on health and social services. If you tack on health or tack on all the other social programs, we are spending over 65 cents on every dollar. The growth in social programs is a concern because it limits our ability, but on a comparative basis I would say we are managing ourselves. Maybe not as well as the Member would indicate or see.
One of the challenges we have, of course, as a government is, yes, we can raise taxes, but over the last number of years we’ve chosen not to just because of the economic conditions. Businesses raise prices. They raise taxes. Drugs are one of our biggest costs and it rises and goes right through the roof. Those are costs that we have no choice on. Business can drive their revenues in a way that we can’t. I think we should keep that in mind as well.
This is a good discussion to have about are we doing things right, are we right-sized, are we managing ourselves correctly. I look forward to the discussion, because we’ve been having it for a number of years. This is more than a rubber-stamp, as the Member said. This will be approved because they make sense, and when we stand up and say are we going to cut these programs to our constituents or do we find the money to fund them, we’ve been saying find the money to fund them.
We’re managing ourselves. We’re one of the best run jurisdictions in the country, second probably only to Alberta and possibly the Yukon, in our debt-to-GDP and any other number of indicators, as we’ve demonstrated to you. It’s not like we’re profligate spendthrifts or blowing money like drunken sailors. These are incredibly important initiatives. We struggle trying to meet all these needs and we say no a tremendous amount of the time as well. It is a challenge, Madam Chair, and I appreciate the feedback from the Members as we try to improve how we do this. Thank you.