Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to talk about the continued deficit at Stanton Hospital. Between the budget years of 1999 and 2000 to the budget year of 2009-2010, which is 11 budget cycles, Stanton has all but one fiscal year been in deficit. That is one year that they did not have a single deficit, Mr. Speaker. It is hard to imagine 11 budget cycles. From what I can tell, it was the one budget year that the Stanton board fired itself, oddly enough.
For 11 years, what have they been doing over there? Adding up each unbudgeted deficit year after year, Stanton has accumulated, if you add those 11 cycled years together, a $33.6 million deficit when you add them and stack them up.
So what is this telling me or what should it be telling the administrators of the hospital that certainly something is going wrong? Is the budget for Stanton Hospital appropriate? Are they budgeting well? What is happening with the administration over there?
The staff are taking a beating as we complain about this hospital, but the real people who should be getting the message are either the Minister’s office or the administration of the hospital. Mr. Speaker, just like the big banks in the U.S., thanks to Obama, Stanton has received a one-time bailout not that long ago. It was referred to as relief funding as they try to do it to brush away or hide under the carpet the deficit problem. It received a generous $22.7 million from this government to hide, bury or cover up the deficit problem.
Mr. Speaker, the deputy minister of Health had stated in Committee of the Whole that, on February 7th, page 49 of the Hansard -- or perhaps maybe the Premier wants to finish my statement, Mr. Speaker, because he might have something to say about the deficit -- but she said that there has been a zero-based review on Stanton. Well, I am not sure what her definition is, but I looked it up from my definition and budgeting means starting from a blank sheet of paper, building up from the bottom so you know what is going on and knowing where it should be going. But, Mr. Speaker, it seemed when I asked about where was that detail, they watered it down, diminished it, started to hide the work, talked about how old it may be, rather than standing behind it proud of that work and trumpeting what they are doing, to save themselves from this continued embarrassment. They find more reasons to deny what is happening over there rather than trying to solve the problem.
Mr. Speaker, I will have questions later today to ask about that so-called zero-based budgeting and how it actually really worked out. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
