Conservative leadership candidate Michael Chong says it’s “ironic” that fellow candidate Kellie Leitch nodded in agreement with a Fox Host earlier this week when he asked if she agrees that “socialized healthcare isn’t the cure.”

“I think it’s ironic that the candidate who wants to screen for anti-Canadian values wants to undermine one of our most fundamental and cherished values which is that we look out for each other in this country, where we have a public healthcare system which ensures that when people get sick they don’t have to pull out their credit card to pay for it,” Chong told iPolitics.

Conservative politicians have often been accused of being in favour of two-tier systems in the past. Most notably, in the 2000’s leader debate, former Conservative MP Stockwell Day tried diffuse rumours that he would introduce a two-tier system, and then wrote an op-ed for CBC in 2011 suggesting that it’s a debate politicians should have.

Leitch appeared on Fox News’ Business Network Tuesday with David Asman and toward the end of the interview, Asman gave Leitch the opportunity to defend Canada’s single payer healthcare system.

Asman said “We have to go, Dr. Leitch, but it’s fair to say socialized medicine isn’t the cure – correct?”

“I would tend to agree with you David,” Leitch said.

Leitch, is an orthopedic surgeon. She pursued her specialty training as a fellow of clinical pediatric orthopedics at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Leitch’s website says that she was selected as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 for her work in both medicine and business in 2005 and she has published in the clinical and best practice model areas of the health care field.

Leitch’s agreement with Asman isn’t sitting too well with Chong, who said he welcomes a debate on how to improve the health-care system.

Chong said the system does need reform, but for him, that starts with ensuring federal finances are back on track to ensure long-term sustainability of federal transfers for healthcare, and also ensuring that provinces are able to be innovative.

“Reforming the system is a whole lot different than throwing out the baby with the bathwater and suggesting privatized healthcare,” he said, adding that suggesting we should move toward a U.S. style of privatized medicine is something other candidates have suggested, including Maxime Bernier

Bernier announced this fall that he would replace the Canada Health Transfer by tax points of equivalent value given to the provinces and that provinces should be responsible for health care funding and management and be fully accountable for the results, while Ottawa should respect the Constitution and stop meddling.

Finally, Bernier health policy suggests creating the conditions to encourage provinces to innovate and adopt reforms in line with what is normal in the mixed universal systems of all other developed countries apart from the U.S., such as allowing for private insurance and private service delivery.

Chong reiterated that Canadians are proud of their public heath care system, that it’s a fundamental Canadian value that we look after someone who gets sick and “they shouldn’t have to bankrupt themselves to pay for healthcare.”

Leadership candidates Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole were not totally clear about what Leitch meant by agreeing to Asman’s remark about socialized healthcare.

Scheer said he would leave it to Leitch to further explain what she meant, but he believes – and the Conservative Party believes – “in our universal health care.”

Scheer said it’s important we have universal access and that nobody goes without health care who can’t afford it.

O’Toole’s campaign, which said he will be unveiling his health-care policy soon, said that every province has had experiments with alternative service providers while still maintaining an equal access, single payer system, noting The Shouldice Hernia Clinic in Toronto, as an example.

The Toronto clinic has inspired Harvard Business cases on how they have revolutionized the alternative provider model within a single-payer system, said O’Toole’s campaign. An O’Toole government would encourage this kind of experimentation to bring innovation and relief into the system to help more Canadians get faster and better access to healthcare.