Insiders continue to get rich off of your tax dollars.
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Summary
On today's show, we are talking about yet another multi-million dollar liberal boondoggle, a program that wasted upwards of $300 million of your money. To tell us more about this and so much more, we have Dan Major, the Health Critic in the House of Commons, and Burton Bailey, the Member of Parliament for Red Deer, Alberta.
Transcript
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hello and welcome once again to the blueprints this is canada's conservative podcast i'm your
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host jamie schmiel member of parliament for halliburton core at the lakes with new content
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for you every single tuesday 1 30 p.m eastern time don't forget to like comment subscribe and
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share this program download it too on platforms like castbox itunes google play and spotify you
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name it, it is out there. On today's show, we are talking about yet another multi-million dollar
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liberal boondoggle, upwards of 300 million of your money wasted. To tell us more about this and
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so much more, we have Dan Major, the health critic, also the Member of Parliament for
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Riding Mountain in the beautiful province of Manitoba, and of course, a first-timer on the
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show, Burton Bailey, the Member of Parliament for Red Deer in Alberta. Thanks very much,
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gentlemen for coming on. Thanks for having us. All right. $300 million. Poof. Gone. Up in the air.
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Gone. No one knows where it is. Who got paid? Where is it? We have a Rive scam. We have, you know,
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almost the We Charity not too long ago. Holy smokes. Round and round we go. Now it's Prescribe
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IT. What is it this time? Well, it's another $300 million liberal boondoggle, right? So it was
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originally, Prescribe IT was an original program to help out the healthcare system. It was
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originally, the original title of it was Axe the Fax. So doctors were faxing over prescriptions
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over to pharmacies. That back in 2017, Prescribe IT. Still using faxes in 2017. Well, they were,
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and ironically, they probably still are. But anyways, that's a different subject altogether.
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nothing really changed nine years went by 300 million dollars was spent and as a result only
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five percent of prescriptions ended up going through that program so the story goes the
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program was canceled it came out in the news and that's when all of a sudden our office got wind
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of that and was going what the heck where did 300 million dollars go and why only five percent uptake
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and we'll tell the rest of the story on onwards but basically nothing happened and and taxpayers
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got left holding the bank just seems this goes over and over again don't forget liberal MPs
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former liberal MPs getting money for equipment during COVID that never actually happened it's
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it's good to be a liberal I guess if you want to raid the taxpayer uh trough here unbelievable
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you had a quick question and we'll cut one here and then uh we'll get into uh your reaction on
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on this this is your question in the house of commons trying to suss out a few more details
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cue up cut one and play cut one all week at the health committee liberals tried to block and
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silence conservatives from getting answers on the 300 million dollar prescribe it it scandal
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they have no problem shutting down debate covering up and protecting liberal insiders who got rich
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off the backs of canadians canadians deserve to know where did the 300 million go and who got rich
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prescribing was launched by the previous government in 29 2017 following consultations
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with provinces and territories the program was always intended to be self-funded over time when
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it became clear that they didn't have the expected uptake and there was no path towards financial
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sustainability canada's new government made the responsible decision to end federal funding for
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the program and refocus resources where they will deliver the greatest benefits to patients and our
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health system. So hundreds of million dollars spent, the parliamentary secretary said there
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was little uptake. So what are we talking about? For $300 million, how much uptake did we actually
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get? Well, they claim 5%, but I think the one thing is that they knew this program was failing
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years ago, and they continued to funnel money into it. So what Maggie Chee said there, it was not
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really truthful because she claims that the old liberal government stopped this program.
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No, they knew years ago they continued on with it and let it continue to fail.
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That seems to be a nice cycle the liberals do all the time. They continue to dump money into
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things. Phoenix pay system, for example, amongst others, that they just keep feeding, hoping that
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one day some miracle will happen and the program will start to function as it should. But given
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the fact that it just seems to be taxpayer money, the government just doesn't seem to
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I'd like to know one IT program that the government has designed that actually works.
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Because anything that they've touched has always been a boondoggle and they should not
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be involving our taxpayer money with IT. We should be sourcing it out and we should have
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individuals that are responsible, that have metrics that we can actually follow. Because
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any business would have shut this program down in the second year.
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Well someone got exceptionally well paid and that's the CEO. Let's give up cut to
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our friend and colleague Helena Cosnes who was questioning the CEO of this farmed out company
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somewhere down the way. So just Canada Health Infoway is a non-profit organization that is
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It's made up of all the provinces and the assistant deputy ministers.
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And they administer, like they're supposed to look at IT programs.
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But Canada, through that board, then sits in behind that board as CEO is Michael Green,
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So he's the CEO of Canada Health InfoWay, but then that was responsible for running prescribed IT.
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My compensation is decided by the Board of Directors.
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As I mentioned, the Board of Directors decides what my compensation is.
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I would just say that the Board of Directors...
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Mr. Green, I would ask that you give, if it's in the public domain, you should just give your salary, please.
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Mr. Green, you know how much you make. You need to tell this committee how much you make.
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Did you ever find out how much money Mr. Green makes?
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But two days later, it all of a sudden showed up.
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It was his salary is $900,000, just shy of $900,000,
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So he got paid the maximum performance bonus last year for Prescribe IT, a failed $300 million program.
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So that's why he was so evasive of answering what his salary was.
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And from our conversation just before we started here on the show, that gentleman is no longer in this position.
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That was, you know, one of many that he didn't answer questions, right?
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So we actually were getting ready to summons him to get him back to committee.
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We're going to bring in the board chair instead because Mr. Green does no longer work for
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So they brought in the board chair of and I don't know if you have actually
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which would lead into Canada Health InfoWay as well.
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So we're seeing the series of events here, right?
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Oh, this is okay. I apologize. Cut three is the Liberals in committee. Do you want to cue this up for us?
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Yeah, so this is an emergency. This is on an emergency meeting that we want to bring in the Minister of Health
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and Michael Green to come into committee to explain what was going on, where the money went, right? Who got rich?
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Okay, and this is just after the majority Liberal change in the committee.
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So Monday night, we had to vote on the motion to have extra representation on Monday night.
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And then Tuesday afternoon, this is the first opportunity that the Liberals had seven in front of us.
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And they had the majority of power in committee.
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And this is on an emergency meeting to figure out where $300 million went.
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And prior to this, Jamie, the Liberals, the bloc, everybody wanted to know.
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Everybody was upset at the way our questions were being answered in committee.
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It wasn't just the CEO, not just Michael Green, even the TELUS representative that I was questioning.
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So all of us as parliamentarians wanted these individuals brought back.
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We had an agreement at our committee that we were going to summons people.
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But this is how our committee ran after the majority.
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With that, I move to have the meeting in camera.
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So I will ask the clerk to take the vote, please.
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And that was the vote that shut down the committee
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Didn't some Liberal Prime Minister say at some point that sunshine is the best
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disinfectant at some point? I remember that in the last few years. So much for that.
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So that means nobody can really talk about what happened inside because it was closed.
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So where are you going next? You tried the board chair. Maybe do you want to queue up cut
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four then? Talk about the board chair? Anything else you want to?
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We did introduce a motion before, we actually posted our motion that we had before,
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before we went in to talk about this before we shut the cameras off, right? And then there was
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a different motion that came out of that camera. So if you could get the two and see what was
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missing between the two, you can kind of summarize what they wanted to hide. And basically it came
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down to the minister. They wanted to protect the minister.
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Bergen, as someone who was elected just over a year ago, is this normal to you?
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You know, when the Parliamentary Secretary, when the cameras were taken off committee,
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We were just in the middle of asking very important questions.
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And even my colleague from the block tried to ask her, why are we going off camera?
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and they kept on, as a majority, ramming this through,
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Even the chair, if you look at the whole clips that Dan and I have posted,
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you'll see even the chair doesn't know what's going on.
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just hiding the fact that this is a liberal mistake
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and we're going to protect the health minister,
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we're going to protect Infoway, and we're going to protect TELUS.
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it was blatant and all the clips were playing happened over a two-week period so there's a
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series of events right from the discovery to the study to the questions to the shutdown
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to to what we're dealing with now okay play cut four has the current federal minister health
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minister ever personally raised concerns with you or the board about the 300 million dollars spent
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CEO's behavior, the CEO of Infoway, was totally unacceptable.
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I talked to the board of directors, and they took the necessary measures.
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One says, like, we had concerns, like, you know, we talked to the minister,
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Of course, that's the CEO, the person that was responsible for prescribed IT, the board and now the board chair saying, no, we didn't talk to the minister and then now or didn't have any concerns.
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And now the minister saying, well, in the house, sure, I talked, but we had concerns.
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Like that says, and we'll get to the bottom of it.
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That's why we're asking for the minister to get back to committee.
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Yeah, let's figure, I'm not sure they even know,
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Okay, so nobody seems to be able to tell the truth here.
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We're being blocked because the liberal majority.
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There is hundreds of millions of dollars up in the air here.
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I know it's difficult because we're being shot down by the majority here.
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Well, we're calling for the minister to come to committee and actually explain herself.
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If there's nothing to hide, okay, what is going on?
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Where are the chances of the minister going, though?
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We were introducing a motion to bring the minister to committee,
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So again, they moved their power to protect the minister.
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The other thing we are asking for is the Auditor General to review it.
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We've got to her, and that is a motion sitting there.
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And we've also submitted more information besides what's happened on committee here,
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but just more factual information for her to make a decision.
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So hopefully, she'll decide to take it on and get to the bottom of what happened with prescribed IT, but also who got rich.
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It's just extremely sad because people work so hard to earn the money on their paycheck.
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And then to have it sent to Ottawa and get wasted, stuff like this and so many others.
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We're running the country on the credit card here.
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Like, this is money that we have to pay back or pay interest on the debt to service it.
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Well, and Jamie, like, Meg Chi, I guess she did mention a little bit to get Canadians better services.
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Can you imagine how many residency spots that we get?
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Like, we have students right now can't get into Canadian schools, medical schools,
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And then we set up a bunch of barriers so they can't get licenses.
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Six million Canadians don't have a family doctor.
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That would be 3,000 specialists at the way that we are training Saudis in our universities.
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That was another committee that we figured out that it cost basically $100,000 to train a Saudi doctor that returns to Saudi Arabia.
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So that $300 million could have gotten 3,000 spaces for medical graduates.
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That would have been kind of nice to have here.
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While we're dealing with massive wait times and hospital closing in British Columbia and elsewhere.
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All these guys are worried about it covering up.
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It's not about trying to serve and do it to the Canadian public
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and making sure that, you know, someone can get in for their hip surgery
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Like, it's not, it's so, they're so lost in this whole file.
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I don't know if they're like, ah, liberals are going to liberal.
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they're always going to dip their, you know, their toes into the trough here. But it just,
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you know, Bev Oda lost her job over a $16 glass of orange juice, for crying out loud. This is
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$300 million on top of everything out, a Rive scam, weed charity, et cetera, et cetera. Like,
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it's unbelievable the lack of respect this government has for the dollars that people
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work so hard for. And the culture of secrecy. Yeah, and the culture of secrecy.
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Now, it did make the front page of the Golden Mail, so it does tell you it has to be pretty serious that one of these media outlets would pick up on it, Jamie.
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Because as you are being kind of sidelined in committee, I know you're doing everything you can and asking questions in the House, but at the same time, we need to get to the bottom of this.
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We're pretty much out of time, but the guests always get the last word.
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Do we want to start with the newbie or the veteran here on the show?
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I think the one thing that I just want to stress to your viewers is that, you know, we've got this Bill C5 coming from the Senate that is going to be connecting all the provinces.
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And the two main players in Prescribe IT, TELUS Health and the Prescribe IT people, and I'm sorry, I should say Canada Health Infoway, are going to be spearheading this project connecting all the provinces.
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Now, if we can't even get faxes prescribed and get it right, how in the world are we going to connect each province with all the medical records so that we can talk to different provinces, share medical information without anything else?
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So we are going to stick on this prescribed IT to disclose it to the public so that this doesn't happen again.
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And one thing I didn't get the chance to show you, so we have got some minutes back
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So this is the kind of stuff you get back, right?
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So they've done a very good job and ironically, it's probably about prescribed IT.
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We don't know what it was, but this is around the end of last year when they were talking
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about removing Mr. Green and like all this stuff.
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And so these are the kind of things we're coming across that we're not going to stop digging until we find out who got rich.
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And we need to get the Health Minister to committee and we need to get the Auditor General to do a full study
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Actually, it's interesting. Of the paragraph they got here, this is the last sentence.
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It was noted how successful the program had been.
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No wonder, no wonder things cost so much and we need to run the country on the credit card.
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You want to say one more thing? It looks like you were going to say something.
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All right. Well, thank you for your time, gentlemen.
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We have Burton Bailey, the Member of Parliament for Red Deer, and Dan Major, the Member of Parliament for Riding Mountain in Manitoba.
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Thank them both for their time. Thank you for yours.
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Don't forget, this is a developing story, so please, if you don't already, follow these two gentlemen on their social media.
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But also, as we mentioned, the mainstream media does touch on this a little, but we need more ears to hear this story, eyes to see it.
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So please like, comment, subscribe, and share this program.
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Until next week, remember, low taxes, less government, more freedom.