PORT HARDY, B.C. — NDP Leader Jack Layton, who's campaigning as the defender of public health care, had surgery at a private clinic in the 1990s, The Canadian Press has learned.

Layton had hernia surgery at the Shouldice Hospital, a private facility in the Toronto suburb of Thornhill, while he was serving as a Toronto city councillor. The NDP leader said he wasn't aware the clinic was private when he went for his surgery in the mid-1990s.

"It's just part of the system," Layton said in an interview. "The doctor says, 'Go there.' You pay with your (Ontario health) card. It never occurred to me (it was) anything other than medicare, which it is.

"I can tell you now if my doctor ever refers me anywhere, I'll ask him that question. It never occurred to me at the time, it wasn't a controversy at the time. It wasn't something on one's mind."

Layton stressed that the Shouldice facility is a not-for-profit facility that has been part of the Ontario medical system for decades.

It was originally set up for veterans returning from the Second World War and was grandfathered into the Ontario medical system, he said.

Layton pointed out he has been aiming at curtailing the growth of for-profit health-care facilities on the federal election campaign.

Earlier in the campaign, Layton criticized Conservative Leader Stephen Harper who said he would send a loved one to a private clinic if it would ease their pain.

Layton pointed to family illnesses, such as his wife Olivia Chow's cancer treatment and his own attack of appendicitis, as instances where he has had to make the choice to support the public system. He didn't mention his hernia operation.

Layton said he wasn't avoiding mention of the operation.

"This was no secret, believe me," he said. "Heck, (Toronto) Mayor (Mel) Lastman came to visit me there. Every family I knew, every middle-aged man that ever ran into a hernia, went to Shouldice. It's part of the system, still is."

While pitching his party as the champion of public health care, Layton has also slipped into a more muddied message on medicare at times.

Liberals accused him of flip-flopping earlier in the election when he declared private clinics are a way of life in Canada.

Federal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said Layton bailed on talks with the Liberal government, supposedly because they weren't prepared to go far enough to crack down on health care.

Suddenly Layton was no longer interested in cracking down, Dosanjh said, adding that Layton "went about inventing facts and manufacturing differences of principle."

Prime Minister Paul Martin has also visited a private medical clinic run by Medisys in Montreal.

The Shouldice Hospital came up in another election. In 2000, former Progressive Conservative Leader Joe Clark was forced to admit he had similar surgery at the same clinic in the 1980s.

Clark, whose surgery was also paid for by the public system, said he had to chose between a longer wait at a public hospital or a short wait at the clinic.

At the time, Clark also denied he took advantage of a second tier of health care.

The 89-bed Shouldice clinic is named for Dr. Edward Earle Shouldice, who tried to develop a quick method during the Second World War of carrying out hernia surgery to quickly get recruits who suffered from the problem ready for military training.