First, I'd like to think that they didn't do it in the 14 years since my report because a pharmacare plan has not been initiated.
Secondly, I will make the point that it will not be easily implemented. There's no easy way in a federal system such as ours, in my experience. I do think that it is a divided jurisdiction between the federal and provincial governments. Ideally you'd like to have a co-operative set of negotiations and agreed-upon facts in public policy. What propels that kind of mechanism is a common agreement on what the values of Canadians are—and I'll spare you the talk about that.
However, what happens if there is an impasse?
The reason I cited Mr. Pearson is that at some stage or another, there simply has to be federal leadership. Then the question is whether or not it will stand if it is not effective. I think that any coercive policy federally is not going to stand if it doesn't, first, do the job, and second, resonate with the values of Canadians.
Medicare in Saskatchewan was introduced all by itself by little old Saskatchewan, in 1962. I was there as a young student on the side of the medicare battle, so I'm a little bit biased.
At a national level, for it to be taken as it was after the Hall commission report appointed by John Diefenbaker.... We're talking about a pan-political group of people based on science. There was opposition. There is always opposition. I suspect there will be opposition on this as well. I think that at this stage in the game, the federal government's obligation, and your obligation—with the greatest respect to this outstanding committee—is to weigh the facts, take a look at the values, and make some decisions as to what you recommend. If the recommendation is that we want a national pharmacare plan, the federal government's spending power, the rationalization, the cost-savings that will flow, and most importantly, the benefits to the Canadian public will lead everybody to come into it, as it was with medicare initially.
I don't think there's any way around that.