Madam Minister, do you have any idea of the number of undiagnosed cancer cases that were offloaded in the first wave in Quebec?
Since it is not your department that provides these services, you probably don't know. So I'll tell you: there were 4,000 cases of undiagnosed cancer. The Canadian Association of Radiologists told us at the end of October that 80,000 people were waiting for MRIs. For CAT scans, 52,000 people were waiting. So you can understand that we have a serious problem. Between the first and second wave, we were not able to treat all of those non-COVID-19 patients.
When we have to offload, it is because our networks are already “sidelined,” as they say. So, in light of this, don't you think the provinces and Quebec are quite right to say that now is the time to give them some hope to restore their networks and avoid having undiagnosed cancer patients end up in the mortality column next year?