I appreciate that. Although we've had good testimony from the Wait Time Alliance folks, most will say that the improvement in the wait-time issue is so slight as to hardly be noticed in many cases. It has not made a big impact on people's need to access the system on a timely basis.
Here are the crises we're facing overall in Canada, and I don't hear you mention any of them in your speech. A health human resource crisis--whether we're talking about doctors, nurses, technologists, or any other health care workers or professionals, on every front there is a serious shortage and crisis. We have a national pharmaceuticals strategy for which there has been no action on your part or the part of your counterparts that I can see, and it's sitting on the shelf gathering dust. There is no national emergency room strategy. There's no national birthing strategy. There's no national.... I could go on and on.
We've had so many representations from groups saying that in terms of a pan-Canadian strategy that will deal with the serious shortcomings of the system and help us sustain medicare and build on it, there's nothing. We don't even have an extension of the human resources strategy, which has ended as of now. There's no new program. Instead we have in the budget little cuts here and there, and no sustaining program. There are cuts to first nations and Inuit health. There are cuts to the Assisted Human Reproduction Agency. There are cuts to the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board. There are cuts to graduate students and post-graduate students in public health. There are cuts to HIV and AIDS. There are cuts to the Public Health Agency.
In every instance where you'd expect to see some focus, some vigour, some energy, you're retreating. So where is the pan-Canadian strategy that is desperately needed on so many fronts?