I think in many cultural contexts outside of Canada there isn't necessarily a trade-off between medical care spending that's oriented around illness treatment and other public policy and social policy spending. But in Canada we've run into a bit of an issue. Our greatest social policy achievement is indeed our medical care system, which allows us to go from coast to coast to coast, and we will go to the wall for individuals to treat their illness when they become sick. But that is crowding out space for our thinking about doing something even more impressive--preventing them from becoming ill in the first place.
Between 2007 and 2010, over a recession, we watched as public--not private--investment in medical care went up by $22.5 billion a year, phased in over those three years. That's over a recession. Simultaneously, we don't see an appetite among Canadians to increase taxes to do other things. If Canadians generally are pretty modest in wanting tax growth but we are seeing dramatic increases in medical care, then yes, our greatest social policy achievement is now actually a huge barrier to innovating and adapting public policy for the day in today's context. So it's impossible for people who have to be elected to actually raise that argument, because just 10% to 15% of Canadians trust you. More of us trust new-car salespeople than trust you, which is just a terrible reality. So we need people like me trying to put the provocative questions out--