Evidence of meeting #17 for Health in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was paramedics.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
5:20 p.m.
Professor, Department of Geography and Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Queen's University, As an Individual
I certainly think community health centres have a greater role to play, particularly in those provinces that have been slow to take them up.
I hate to come back to this basic point: you can create a building in your community and call it a community health centre, but if you can't staff it, it's not going to make the kind of shift that you're asking for. I'm so sorry to have to say this, but I think we really do need the federal government—since the provinces are reluctant—to take a look at the human resources issues in a much more serious way, and to shift resources into training across all fields.
5:25 p.m.
NDP
Libby Davies NDP Vancouver East, BC
If I could, I'll just jump in there about the point I was getting to earlier. If there were a big shift to, say, nurse practitioners, who seem to have a much greater role to play in the system.... For example, in B.C. we have very few nurse practitioners. Here in Ontario, it's a much better situation. I don't know whether nurse practitioners play a significant role in Quebec.
But even if we did that, would we be having an impact in terms of the human resources input?
5:25 p.m.
Professor, Department of Geography and Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Queen's University, As an Individual
I'll make one quick comment.
The Ontario government did put resources into creating nurse practitioners. Most of those nurse practitioners, who they were hoping would go to rural and small town communities, stayed in the largest urban areas and, generally speaking, practice in group practices in those large urban areas.
But it really goes beyond nurse practitioners. There are needs for physiotherapists, occupational therapists, home care workers.... If we want to have truly integrated community health centres, all of these areas.... And we've said almost nothing, which I've noticed has been spoken about in other committee meetings, about the kinds of mental health workers who are needed to work with the older population as well in these centres.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
5:25 p.m.
Professor, Department of Health Administration, University of Montreal, As an Individual
Very briefly, I would tell you to beware of ''big bangs''. When the provinces organized most of the big bangs, there were changes to the structure. Today, we need to change practices. In some provinces, there are indeed changes in practices. I don't quite agree with what Dr. Rosenberg said.
In Quebec, we have set up, and we continue to set up, family medicine groups located in the communities. As I mentioned earlier, hospitals are making an effort to adapt to the needs of the elderly. So, there are both small measures that are extremely important and very difficult to implement, and new directions that need to be developed on a larger scale.
You know, when we talk about big bangs, we're talking about brighter futures. In fact, we're talking about tomorrow. Usually, things seem brighter the next day, but the following day, we start thinking seriously about what we did.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
I let everyone go over because it was a very important topic. You certainly have done an amazing job of opening a lot of different aspects to this very important topic. I want to thank you for being here today. We look forward to any other information that you can forward to my office. If you do that, I'll make sure I forward it to the clerk, or to the clerk's office, so we can disseminate it amongst the members.
Thank you very much for joining us.
The meeting is adjourned.