I'd like to respond to that. I'm certainly familiar with many of the community resources, as a family physician, and they're an important part of our system. One problem is that they're somewhat fragmented. Very often, one agency doesn't speak to another, or it's very difficult for caregivers to actually find out what's available in the communities. So the coordination of it is not optimal in many cases, certainly in the community where I work.
However, there's still a role for the public system. The way I see the community agencies is that they are a supplement, an addition, but the public system is still the core of our health care system.
One of the issues we have with the lack of home care is that right now about 15% of the hospital beds in Canada are taken up by seniors waiting to be placed in a nursing home or to go home with home care—home care that is not available. We really do feel that it is money wasted, at $1,000 a day for those beds versus $50 a day for home care. We estimate that it's about $2.3 billion. That's one of the issues.
But I hear what you're saying: that is an important part of our system. But it can't replace the role of the public system.