Thank you so much for having me this afternoon to speak on a very important subject for the health care system in Canada.
As mentioned before, I'm the president of Quebec's association of cardiac surgeons. I'm professor of surgery at the University of Montreal. I've been a cardiac surgeon for 25 years, so I've been exposed pretty much to the system day in day out.
My colleague Dr. Maguire raised a lot of very important points. One of the things I wanted to speak to is the fact that our system showed during COVID that it was not on the brink of disaster, but had already collapsed. COVID simply made things evident not only in Quebec but all over Canada. This, in my opinion, is related to chronic underfunding of the health system in Canada.
We saw that we did not have enough beds and not enough personnel. The lessons that we should have learned from the SARS crisis and the Campbell report way back were not either learned or remembered, because all of the necessary tools were mentioned in that very extensive report. I encourage you to read it.
I think that, sadly, a lot of decisions that were made health-wise were with a short-term vision. We do need to look at the way we entice people to become health professionals, doctors, etc. It's all well and good to say we will have immigration, but I think we should have a long-term plan to entice, train and have a sufficient number of health care professionals. That's all across the board. Physicians are part of it, but definitely, they are part of a team. If there's a deficiency in one of the team members in terms of volume, we cannot function properly.
I think to have a proper culture, as Dr. Maguire said, you need to have sufficient team sizes. If you don't have a sufficient size, then people will not stay. They will not come. It's all interrelated, the culture, the workplace environment, etc. That is very important.
I think that the short-term vision should be put aside. There should be some kind of an independent body that would make decisions to look a generation ahead, 20 years ahead, and make sure that we have a health resource plan, also in terms of infrastructure, to be able to take care of the needs of Canadians. We all know that the population is aging, and this is associated with a lot of our health care needs.
The bed levels in Canada are amongst the lowest in, I would say, the occidental part of the world. Beds aren't necessarily always the solution, but definitely they could have been part of the solution during the pandemic. This should be looked at, because there is going to be another pandemic down the road, the same way COVID followed SARS.
I think it's important to have a body that will be accountable, that doesn't just look four years ahead, that makes sure we will get the bang for our buck as Canadians and taxpayers.
I think this is the time when we need to look way ahead. We cannot put aside or put on hold investment in the health care system. Because of COVID, the number of patients that we will have to treat because they were undertreated during the COVID pandemic is going to be enormous. The funding should start now or else we will never get over it.
I thank you for your attention. I look forward to answering questions.