Thank you.
Maybe I should save myself a long speech, and say I agree with Brendan, but being a politician I won't.
I have two things. We do have the most members in Parliament, so it doesn't seem totally crazy that we get our study in first.
I certainly support the Conservative study. I like your study. I like your children's study, and I'm going to support it. But with respect to this, and the urgency of this situation, I agree with Brendan. We've always had a shortage, and I know people on the other side agree with that. Especially in rural and northern areas, we've always had a shortage of primary care practitioners.
Certainly, under COVID this is being made worse. Many people are burned out, including nurses and doctors. The reality is, given the baby boom, there are many people who are about retirement age, and coming out of COVID they're saying, “That's it, no more. I don't want to do it”.
I'm a little in the same position myself, although I jumped ship before COVID, not afterwards. I know there are many health practitioners who are tired. They need assistance. The health care system is struggling as it is. It's going to struggle harder, because of an increased shortage of personnel.
There's an urgency to this. A number of us here in the room are on the same page on this. We are a minority government. It takes time to get things done. Why don't we start working on this? We can hopefully find solutions, and perhaps we can even work together to find solutions, which would be really nice. A crazy thought, I know. Okay, forget I said that.