Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Wild Rose for his kind words. It is indeed a new Parliament and a new atmosphere here. I do not recall ever having heard these kind words in the last Parliament.
I would like to remind the hon. member for Wild Rose that the actual management of the health care system is within the jurisdiction of provincial governments but the federal government does set the parameters. The Canada Health Act specifies medically necessary services.
I hold very dearly to the concept that user fees are detrimental to what happens to Canadians. I am going to tell you why. In many instances when a user fee is charged it becomes a short-term way of collecting more money but it does not change the functioning of the health care system. What ends up happening is that the same people who perhaps have been abusing the system or not using it properly then feel that they can continue to misuse or not use appropriately the actual medical system in place.
Very often those people who needed to access that service could not because they did not have the amount of money available to pay up front. It perhaps was a very small fee but for some people it is a big fee. They do not visit the doctor in the early stages of a disease and in the end the disease progresses. They become much sicker and have to enter the hospital. The whole thing has now cost the government far more because not only does it have to pay the medical costs, it then has to pick up all of the other social costs associated with, let us say, a single parent being admitted to a hospital. It also has to bear the brunt of the hospital costs which are far higher than the initial doctor's visit might have been.
From my personal experience, I know that a user fee is the wrong way to go. It is not the way to ensure that our system changes to meet the needs of those who really need it.