Mr. Speaker, the member will know the Canada Health Act has five basic principles: universality, available to all, publicly administered and funded, comprehensive, accessible and portable. As long as a province respects the five principles of the Canada Health Act, those transfers are fine.
Members will know that one of the problems we have had in a number of provinces is that there has been this leakage out of the public system into privately provided health care for those who are prepared to pay for it over and above the taxes they pay. It is a system for the rich.
If there were an opt out in a transfer to compensation, there is a risk. I would suggest the private health care system would flourish in Quebec, that only the rich, those who could afford to pay, would be able to get health care and there would be leakage of health care professionals out of the public system. The best and the brightest would clearly be moving into the private sector where they could get more compensation for their services. This would be the beginning of the end of public health care in Canada and Quebec.
Could the member explain to us what do we do about first nations, which are totally federally funded? What do we do about our shared research? What do we do about providing for pandemics? What do we do to protect available, comprehensive, accessible health care for the poor, for those who could not afford the private health care system that the member was promoting?