Don't be sorry. I'm not a dreaded liberal (oh, the horror!). See my previous Post above.
But Canada has a very different history than the U.S., with a much smaller population, a larger land mass and a different political structure. It would take a long time to explain it all, but to sum it up, Canada has a fully publicly-funded system which is failing its citizens. I'm all for private health care (or, more accurately, a public/private system), but up there, you can't even TALK about private health care without being demonized. The crazy thing is, Canadians have access to employer-sponsored and individual pay supplemental health care, but it's only permitted for stuff not covered by the provincial health care plans.
The fact is, the state can't afford to do it all anymore (and never could, really).
Even here in the States it's a combination of public and private, and you know the debate that's been going on about that... :-)
One thing that strikes me is how completely government run Canada's healthcare is. Even in the touted welfare state experiement that was New Zealand we never fully disallow private elective surgeries when the welfare state raised its ugliest head in the 70s.
And Australia seems to have private emergency healthcare in addition to elective surgeries.