Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley for the question and for showing that he gets it. That is something the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages does not get, which is that under chapter 11 Canadian programs and policies that protect and that are done in the best interests of its citizens are under threat, including health care.
The member will yell across the way that health care is exempted from chapter 11. Well, the safeguards he talks about, and that others have talked about, do not fully exclude the Canadian health care system. In fact he should know of the challenge in B.C. by an investor who is seeking something like $155 million in damages from his government to get a foothold into the B.C. health care system to then begin to broaden and expand private health care clinics. That is just one example.
Let us also consider the fact that under NAFTA, the minute our Canadian government might decide to embrace an expansion of our health care system--I am wishing and praying that this will happen, but I do not see it under the Conservatives--to expand the medicare concept to include pharmacare, home care and dental care, it is possible that our entire health care system can be challenged under chapter 11 of NAFTA, because it opens the door in a new area for which foreign investors can claim they want fair advantage and national treatment.
That is the danger. If we are serious about protecting medicare and growing it so that it meets the needs of all Canadians, then chapter 11 has to be reconsidered.