Since I have the floor for only two and a half minutes, I'm going to play all my cards.
Madam Minister, you know that I have a hard time understanding your logic of dealing with the pandemic first and then dealing with health transfers, as if we were asking to implement a health transfer program. It already exists.
What we are saying about chronic underfunding is that the various federal governments have not contributed for 30 years. This has weakened the systems. The systems weakened during the pandemic have created two classes of patients, COVID-19 patients and other patients.
The statistics I am giving you are from the ministry of health and social services report. Dr. Champagne, president of the Association des médecins hématologues et oncologues du Québec, said that we are living off our credit cards and that this will cost society dearly, both in human and financial terms. A cancer diagnosed later becomes a heavy burden to cure. To say that we need to fix the pandemic before we start investing in caring for non-COVID-19 patients is to fail to understand the lessons we must learn from the pandemic, Madam Minister.
How can you justify logic like that?