I think the federal role in health care, which is kind of the message I took from your question, is that it has several. It's the international voice of Canada on the world health stage. It has a responsibility as far as I would see it, on behalf of our members, to provide an even playing field. So if you live in Iqaluit or you live in Goose Bay or you live in downtown Toronto, it is not unreasonable to expect that you would have a broadly similar access to a broadly similar range of a broadly similar standard of health care.
The delivery challenges are certainly acute in more rural areas, but I think on a practical level then, given my understanding of the federal and provincial interaction, you can't have governments held liable or responsible to each other. There's a kind of “first among equals” sort of thing.
I think you look at it from the patient's point of view. If the system is accountable to the patient, then at the end of the day the patient has to have a redress. We talked about a patients' charter, and in actual fact a patients' charter was one of the things that one of my predecessors took out. I think therein lies the nugget of a mechanism by which you can make the system work to the interests of the patient who actually funds it and needs it at the time.
Turning to how you do that, there are various ways you could craft a system like that. But I think at the end of the day you've got to look at it from the patients' point of view—what is equitable? We've heard very clearly across Canada that they wanted an equitable system; they want those kinds of opportunities. How you craft it: a patients' charter may be your answer to that.
That's the short, two-cent version.