The case that's before the B.C. Supreme Court now involves a suit and then a countersuit that basically involves the provincial health care authority. The main protagonists here are Cambie Surgeries Corporation, the provincial government PHSA in terms of the Ministry of Health, and then there are intervenors, such as Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the BC Health Coalition, which have that status to inform the discussion.
The federal presence in that particular argument has been less than obviously all the other players. It is, at this point, as far as I can tell, a provincial jurisdictional matter. The crux of the matter is there needs to be some sort of enforcement of the Canada Health Act if indeed we have a Canada Health Act. The issue has been there are providers of private for-profit care across the country that have, it would appear, or it is alleged, abused the system and inappropriately billed. That is in the public record. There was an audit done of the Cambie Surgeries clinic.
The question is, what is the power, and what is the power that will be used by the federal government in response to this? Supposedly the Canada Health Act says that if a jurisdiction is improperly using the resource, then those tax dollars that were spent...let's say in overbilling or double billing or extra billing. If any of that came out of billing on top of what the province was paying, of which a proportion was coming from the federal government, then we have a right to reclaim that money. There has been no attempt made federally or provincially to actually enforce those provisions.