I think the fundamental question here is how you keep a balance between the importance of information and the lengths to which you are prepared to go in order to get that information.
I am sorry that I'm not with you. I am not able to fly or I would be happy to be there. But certainly in this debate the sense I'm getting is that whenever that question is confronted head-on, we're seeing some skirting around it. I suspect that indicates there's a degree of whistling past the graveyard going on here as people try to get back to the issue of the importance of the data and are clearly uncomfortable talking about the degree of compulsion that's required to get it.
For example, Mr. Garneau said he wants the most accurate information possible when we're making decisions. The most accurate information available in the health care field, the gold standard, if you like, is personal health files: my health file, yours, and the next person's. Is the suggestion here, then, that because that information is indisputably valuable, that gives the state the authority to compel me to release it?
We don't do that in the health care field. We have something called “informed consent” where we do what I'm hearing talked about a lot today. We go to people and we give them the information about how important this is. Perhaps the physician sits this patient down and goes through all the different kinds of issues in the community that we've heard about: AIDS, SARS, or the difficulties that low-income groups have with health issues. By the end of that kind of discussion, very large numbers of people will give their data. That's the experience we have. But if you put a gun at their head and you say you're taking it whether they want you to or not, it's at that point that you create a difficulty, not only in the health field, but in my view, you create a moral dilemma.