Madam Speaker, every province is different, and that is why they absolutely need to have primary jurisdiction over health care delivery.
I know in British Columbia we are looking at an innovative model of how we pay primary care physicians, getting them off of a fee-for-service model and more to a salary model. In Alberta, there have been discussions about allowing nurse practitioners to deliver more primary care because of the doctor shortage.
What I will say though, as a federal politician who is in some way responsible for the federal purse, I do not want to just hand blank cheques to the provinces. I do believe that, if that money is going to be consistent with what is already under the Canada Health Act, there should be some national conditions on what we want to achieve as a country. It should not necessarily be just a blank cheque. I do want to see some federal leadership in determining what kind of health care we want to see so Canadians from coast to coast to coast have access to the care they should have.