Madam Speaker, the principles of the Canada Health Act are universality, accessibility, comprehensiveness, portability and publicly funded. The member well knows that.
The member needs to comment on the issue of accessibility, portability and comprehensiveness. As an example, in Ontario there are only five doctors who perform the procedure called a spinal fusion. Two of those doctors are in the Mississauga hospital in my own riding. The member would well understand that if private clinics were set up, even though they might be publicly funded to provide that, there would be a drain on the public health system to provide the human resources and medical resources, personnel and otherwise, to staff and equip these private facilities. It means that the accessibility and the comprehensiveness of the services available to the public at large would be reduced.
Since the experience in Alberta has shown that private health care is more expensive, has longer waiting lists and violates the spirit of the Canada Health Act, does the member not agree that these private clinic arrangements as proposed by bill 11 in Alberta would be inappropriate?