As provincial health ministers were meeting in Toronto to talk about the contentious issue of federal health funding, Conservative leadership hopeful Maxime Bernier unveiled a solution of his own: Ditch the federal health transfer altogether and end the federal-provincial squabbling.

“This week’s meeting in Toronto is not going to solve anything,” Bernier said at an Ottawa press conference. “The provinces will beg Ottawa for more money, and the federal government will try to impose its priorities over how and where the money will be spent.”

He said none of that will result in better services.

Bernier criticized his own Conservative government’s continuation of the health transfer escalator at six per cent, saying it resulted in too little for what was spent.

“The six per cent increases that our Conservative government provided, year after year, were way above what should have been a normal rate of increase.”

He said even with that increase — and with the Conservatives’ 2006 election promise of a wait-times guarantee — Canada still has long wait times compared to other OECD countries.

“Ten years later, wait times are bad or worse,” he said.

Bernier said he would replace the health transfers with “tax points of equivalent value.”

Since health care is a provincial responsibility, he said, funding decisions should be left to the provinces — an arrangement he said would lead to “more efficient federalism.”

Ontario Premier Mike Harris and Reform Party Leader Preston Manning raised the same idea in a series published by the Fraser Institute and Montreal Economic Institute years ago.

Bernier also took time Monday to attack the public “monopoly” on health care, saying countries with private hospitals like Germany, Austria and France perform better on wait times.

“It’s time we break the taboo surrounding the private sector in healthcare,” he said.

Bernier has been the most active Conservative leadership candidate on the policy front so far and has distinguished himself from the pack as the libertarian in the field.

He is the first to come out with a policy proposal on healthcare.