Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the guests for being with us today.
Ms. Shields, I can attest to one thing that you stated, that alcohol consumption has gone up. I can assure you that in the last two years I've been drinking more than I've ever drunk.
Seriously, I want to make a couple of comments and get your feel on whether or not I'm on the right track or the wrong track.
I'll start by saying that I had the privilege of being health minister in the province of Alberta for two years, in 2009 and 2010. I've always felt, after having that privilege, that health care in this country has a real structural problem. We spend all of our effort and all of our money on treating sickness, and not nearly enough on preventative care. I've always felt that mental health was the poor cousin of health care spending because it's almost a hidden disease. If you see someone who has a broken leg, you'd better fix it, or if someone has cancer, you need to treat cancer, but mental health is a very silent issue.
Despite the fact that we've spent all of that money on health care and continue to spend a tremendous amount of money on it, Dr. Smart from the Canadian Medical Association, who was one of the witnesses at our last meeting, described Canada's health care system as being on life support and in a crisis.
Would you agree that we need to fix the structural problem of health care and not just throw more money at it, which is so often the call of everyone we talk to about how to fix health care?