Mr. Speaker, may I be allowed to answer the question? I would like the opportunity to answer the question.
The statement made by the hon. member is that the public does not get the difference between public ownership and public administration. The hospital is not owned by the government, but the services are administered by the government under the Canada Health Act and according to a clear contract that follows the rules of the Canada Health Act.
I would ask the member to ask family physicians if they are not sitting in a private practice paying their own rent, running their own show, but under the Canada Health Act they are bound by clear rules and they must be under a contract to the public administration which is the province. There is a real difference between ownership and administration which the hon. member does not get.
As I said, the bottom line here is that her political party wants to own everything. No wonder those members muddy the waters between ownership and administration.
The hon. member talked about cataract surgery and hernia repair being done as a private for profit service. These are medically required and medically necessary services. Under the Canada Health Act they have to be delivered according to the principles of medicare under the act. This is absolutely clear. As I said before, in 1995 the health minister enforced the Canada Health Act for exactly that reason in Alberta and withheld transfer of payments as articulated in the act following the act to the letter.
Finally, the hon. member of Parliament did not understand what I said when I talked about the X-ray. It was not if the person needed, she used the word “needed”. I said, if the X-ray was needed because of very clear clinical guidelines and clinical evaluation, not because somebody dreamed it up one day or walked down the street and said they thought this was because a trained health provider was following clear clinical guidelines and decided this was a medically necessary service. That falls under the Canada Health Act.
That is all I was trying to explain to the patient, but I guess it is pretty difficult to understand it if one is sitting facing ideology all the time.