Mr. Speaker, I’m sort of reminded of a famous individual known as Tommy Douglas. He fought tooth and nail for health care and I could imagine his position now; he’d be rolling in his grave to find out that means testing or income testing our health care system is the way to go. I think he’d call this a user-pay system and this is sort of a door being cracked open to that demonstration.
If I could loosely quote the Minister, a minute ago she said I don’t understand what the big deal is about the implementation date. Mr. Speaker, that’s the whole problem. It’s the implementation date without reasonable consultation. She said a delivery date must be delivered by this time and we’re going to get there hell or high water. That’s what that date does.
What I’m going to ask the Minister is: would she agree to this House today that she will first take off any implementation date without approval of this House, without the support of this House on any changes to the Supplementary Health Benefits Program.