“If you compare us to our closest neighbor in the United States, healthcare really is a business, so the customer comes first. And there are advantages, in terms of wait times, customer experience, without a doubt. There are disadvantages to the fact that to provide that type of care is extremely expensive. And you can look at the numbers.

Because you’ve spent more money on healthcare doesn’t mean you’re actually getting better care. One example I could give is Sainte-Justine Hospital here in Montreal. It can stand toe-to-toe with the other top children’s hospitals of the world. The difference, maybe it’s not as pretty as the other ones. But you have the brains, which when it comes to your health is probably the most important thing.

And Canadian healthcare, and Quebec more particularly, yes, there is a lot of money that’s invested. It could be more efficiently used, without any doubt. But you get the fact that when you get sick, you don’t use your house. And so there are compromises to be made. And I think as a society, despite our discomfort with some of the services provided, overall people do, get better care, and more consistent care in our system.

If I were to present you an ideal model, it would probably be a mix of the two. We don’t have the best, as we’re probably very inefficient in our model because we’re not thinking like a business. I would say in the United States it’s too much of a business, which leaves out a lot of people from healthcare. And so some sort of hybrid, which we have models in the world in England, Singapore, Switzerland, tend to work very, very well.”