Mr. Speaker, I ask the hon. member to look at the medicare system or the health insurance program and one of the five principles, accessibility.
Accessibility tends to conjure a cost factor, that everyone is equal from a cost point of view. However, I would like to bring up two or three other points. The first is transportation, those in the north getting to the services. If anyone breaks a leg in the city, he or she calls an ambulance and goes to the hospital. However, the same kind of accessibility is not that readily available in the north. That is one aspect of accessibility.
The second is waiting lists. We are looking at health from a preventive point of view, a stitch in time saves nine kind of thing, but we have horrendous waiting lists. It deters accessibility if one has to wait to have a lump examined or whatever, something along that line.
The third point is accessibility of services. Should we provide all services to all people in all areas? We can get into hospital debates of whether there should be heart surgery in every hospital, every community hospital, or kidney machines, these kinds of things which are not economically feasible.
Therefore from the accessibility point of view, which everyone tends to zero in on, cost and the availability of the individual's economic position for accessibility, could you address the other three or four points?