Thanks very much.
Thank you all very much.
I got back from Washington yesterday, and I am very concerned that internationally Canada is falling way behind. Whether it's wait times or electronic health records or patient satisfaction, there is a concern that we have fallen dramatically behind in the last little while in the good intentions of 2004. Particularly on things like reducing wait times and improving access, where in the accord it says “reductions in wait times in priority areas such as”, and yet we seem to have stuck to the five original ones. We are being judged not only internationally, but by patients on how we're doing on all the other ones; whether it's for a shoulder injury, or for mental health visits, or finding a family doctor, this is a concern. So in terms of how we are reporting to patients on how we're doing on all these things, I think I'm quite concerned.
I'm also concerned in terms of the health human resources action plan including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and technologists. I am not sure we're getting where we need to go. Particularly, I'd like to know what happened to the $100 million we gave to increase the number of aboriginal health resource professionals. We don't seem to be doing that, or for official languages, which I think is helpful to all. I guess you won't be surprised that I will ask, what ever happened to the goals and targets in public health? Have we set the targets we wanted from the health goals process that all the provinces and territories participated in? Do we have targets on any of the diseases or any of the social determinants of health?
I guess I'll leave it there, and my colleague will ask some of the other questions.
The strength of our health care system will only be the confidence Canadians have in it. I think we need to be able to show Canadians that they're doing as well here as they would anywhere. I guess that's why wait times become the talisman for this, the other point being that without an appropriate health human resources team in our country, poaching from province to province isn't going to work. That's why there was this accord, to make sure we had the right mix of health professionals for all of Canada.