It's an excellent question, and I've been asked it several times: Am I not contradicting myself? My response has been the following.
Every major poll I've looked at over my adult lifetime in Canada—I've lived here all my life—shows that support by Canadians runs literally 85% to 95% for public health care. Purely on a practical level, it's pointless to even discuss that, because Canadians won't countenance an American-style system or some form of privatization. That's my first answer.
To unpack that a little more, the trend in our social programs...and you know this from Quebec, where Premier Couillard introduced a much greater degree of targeting. He did this with tuition, with day care. Universality is really expensive; it uses up a lot of resources. You're squandering scarce resources on people who don't need help.
I do not need help. I'm a professor. I'm like every professor in this country. We are very well paid. I'm not supposed to say that. I'm supposed to tell you that we're on the edge of starvation, but we're not. We're very well paid.