Thank you very much. I'm glad to see you all here.
I'm from a rural area. I represent Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, and I was at the graduation class of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. I am a very close friend of and deal a lot with Dr. Maurianne Reade, who provides residential training in Mindemoya. I'm glad we're seeing the input from you here today.
You talked about incentives; just about every one of you touched base on that issue. There are pluses to incentives, but there are the negatives as well. The NDP put forward a proposal that would encourage doctors to go into the rural areas by helping them pay off some of their loans if they would commit to staying. This is a good thing in a way, because it would get doctors there; however, it doesn't deal with the issue of whether, once the incentive is paid out, they would leave or stay.
The other thing we've talked about as well is the opportunity for the government to ensure, if there are some disparities with respect to staffing in the hospitals, that in areas with fewer than 30,000 residents there be at least one nurse practitioner put in. I think we actually need somewhat more, but that is something we saw as a need.
Staffing is a big issue. You've touched base with respect to some of the suggestions you're making in moving this forward. The Canadian Federation of Medical Students was here yesterday. They talked about the downfall of incentives, but also about the impact of having grants so that there are incentives for students and about how to get more of the rural students there, because normally they're the ones who will stay.
Could you provide us with some feedback on that and maybe indicate some of the downfalls you're seeing—what's working, what's really not working, and where government should come in?