People have said to me that we should be grateful for our health care system and not complain because other people don’t have as good a health system. They speak as if this is a gift from the hospitals. It isn’t. The people of this province and this country, in their wisdom, chose this system. The citizens of Canada pay for this system because they want every person who needs health care to have access to it. This health system belongs to the people. The medical system, and the people who work in the medical system, work for the people of British Columbia and Canada. If the people who fund the system want to know where their information is going, why won’t the people we employ provide it?
Tracey Tyler, wrote in the Star, Jan. 14, 2009, of a court ruling in Ontario (in this case regarding the Toronto Police Services Board) that required , “municipal government institutions to produce any electronically stored information the public has a right to see, even if it requires using new technical expertise to develop new software”. So, if the police are required to provide information that the public “has a right to see”, why aren’t the hospitals?