Mr. Speaker, it is good to be debating health care in the House again today. We have heard some interesting discussions this morning.
When I hear some members talking about a private system and other members suggesting that the system will collapse if there is private involvement, have they failed to recognize that 30% of our health care spending already is outside of the public system?
The problem we have with our single public system is that it is inefficient, ineffective and it has no competition.
As an example of that, just recently there was a big article about the cancer care unit in Toronto. The private system comes in during the evening to run the equipment because the cancer unit cannot find people in the public system to work those hours. The private clinic runs the equipment in the evening and is able to treat 1,000 patients for cancer therapy with the same equipment for the same cost that the public system would treat 600.
We are talking about innovation. I wonder if my colleague would expand again on the importance of giving the provinces the opportunity to innovate in health care.