Mr. Speaker, the time has come to give Canadians freedom of choice in health care.
Every year Canadian taxpayers put tens of billions of dollars into health care premiums to pay for our medicare. Yet many of these same Canadians make the conscious decision to drop out of the conventional health care system, choosing alternate forms of health care.
One of my constituents, Mrs. Margaret Wiens, recently wrote to me: "A change in the way we deliver health care is long overdue. It is discriminatory to only cover and recognize conventional drugs. I and hundreds of thousands of others in Canada faithfully pay our medical premiums, and therefore we should have freedom to choose our preferred type of treatment".
I am confident that Canadians are capable of making intelligent decisions on how they will care for their bodies. It is time for the government to share this confidence. The Canada Health Act must be changed to return to Canadians the freedom of medical choice they are calling for.