Madam Speaker, what has been missed in all of this discussion is unless we define the core essential we cannot decide whether or not a user fee has any place in our system. For discretionary, elective things, surely the minister would not deny those things to be done. That is why we need the definition. That is why there cannot be this airy-fairy situation where one thing is medically necessary in one part of the country and one thing is medically necessary in another.
On the issue of facility fees, the semi-private clinic, there is a philosophical argument on that specific issue. If the procedure is medically necessary, it must be paid for by public funds in Canada today. If the procedure is medically necessary and it is done outside a hospital and the costs generated to do that outside the hospital are not borne publicly, where should they be borne? I believe they should make no impediment whatever to the public system.
I ask the minister, although this is not interchange time, to find me a country-without using the U.S. example, which is commonly used and where that is not done-where that produces a problem.