Six days before the B.C. Supreme Court was set to begin a long-awaited trial that could alter the public health-care system in B.C. in fact, in Canada the provincial government uncovered new documents in its own files that forced another delay.

These are not just a few errant scraps of paper that were somehow overlooked in the past six years of pretrial wrangling, but thousands of pages of Ministry of Health documents that have just made their way to the surface. They relate to surgical waiting lists and physicians extra billing the core of the case about the place of private health care in B.C.

Since 2008, the province has sought to tackle illegal billing practices at two private health clinics run by Dr. Brian Day. All the while, the province has been paying annual penalties to Health Canada for violations of the Canada Health Act related to the practices it has not managed to stop.

Dr. Day has made no attempt to hide the fact that, for years, the Cambie Surgery Centre and Specialist Referral Clinic have been breaking the law by charging patients for medically necessary treatment. What is now before the courts is his Charter challenge that argues British Columbians should be allowed to use their own resources to jump to the front of the queue for medical treatment because waiting lists in the public health-care system are unacceptably long.

The trial was set to begin on Monday but now has been postponed as both sides examine the newly found ministry files.

NDP health critic Judy Darcy says she hopes the government will throw everything it can at Dr. Day, because if he wins, she believes, British Columbia will be opening the door to a new two-tiered health-care system for the country.

She isnt convinced the B.C. Liberals wanted to fight this battle.

I think the government is under tremendous pressure to defend the Canada Health Act, she said in an interview. But at least at the outset, the province needed some prodding to engage.

The B.C. Nurses Union led the charge in 2003, challenging the provincial government to enforce the law and stop private clinics from treading on public-health turf.

It was 2008 when the province finally sought an audit of the books of Dr. Days two clinics. The two sides then spent four years arguing about the scope of the audit. Finally, in 2012, the Medical Services Commission concluded the clinics were extra billing patients and threatened an injunction, which is still up in the air.

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New files could raise stakes in B.C.s health-care wait-list fight