Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his comment.
As the elected members of the provincial legislatures are answerable to the Canadian public it would be political suicide for them to create a health care situation where the people who elected them to office would suffer.
It behoves every elected individual in this country to face the writing on the wall, to realize that we have a situation where health care costs are increasing at four times the rate of economic growth and governments are dealing with deficit spending with less and less money being applied to health care.
We have to face up to this. It is not just dismantling or destroying the Canada Health Act, it is modifying it to make it a better situation. To accept the current situation as it is now is to merely stick one's head in the sand. It is incumbent upon all of us to do something about it in order to preserve essential health care services for all Canadians so that they are not going to suffer, they are going to have their operation and they are not going to die as they do down in the United States due to lack of care.