Thank you, Dr. Collins.
Thank you for your question, Mr. Thériault. It's quite relevant.
It's undeniable that the tragedy of the pandemic today is compounded by collateral effects caused by delays in medical procedures. CMA investigated this issue in October of last year and recently released a report on reducing delays.
I'll mention some of the findings of the report. As COVID-19 cases began to increase in Canada, it became clear that there was additional pressure on the health care system. This is what we're experiencing today, on a daily basis.
You talked about what is urgent and what is important. We're dealing today with what's urgent, but the report also talks about what's important. This includes procedures such as joint replacement, which affects quality of life, cataract surgery, or diagnostic imaging, which has a major impact not only on quality of life but also on survival. When we're trying to diagnose cancers, for example, we're facing significant delays that result in a significant backlog of procedures and a significant increase in wait times. The situation surrounding these interventions, which are essential to survival and have a significant impact on [Technical difficulties—Editor], allows us to take a look at the precarious nature of our health care system.
Therefore, we're calling on all levels of government to expand primary health care services and increase support for health care so we can deal with those backlogs that were already starting to build up by the time we realized the situation, during the first wave of the pandemic. There was a second wave and now there is a third wave. It's clear that Canadians will suffer the consequences of that.