Thank you, Madam Chairperson.
Thanks to all of you for your appearance today regarding what we as a committee consider to be perhaps the overriding issue of concern.
Let me start with wait times. As you've mentioned, Karen, the alliance came out with its report today. It is pretty scathing. It calls attention to the lack of significant change in the last year. We all know that the reduction or elimination of wait times was one of the five key promises of the present government in the 2006 election. We know that in Budget 2007 a serious commitment was enunciated to deal with wait times—in fact, you talked about a patient wait time guarantee. Today the alliance, which is made up of every professional medical organization in the country, has said that nothing has happened in a year.
In our access indicators, we see a change from an “incomplete” to a “C-plus”. This is a positive change, but it is still only slightly above average in benchmark targets, in wait time information. Overall, this is a pretty dismal record for a government that promised to eliminate wait times.
I'd like to know the nature of the problem What is being done to address this and to keep the promise?