You've raised a very good point.
In terms of thinking outside of the box.... The Royal Canadian Legion has 1,600 branches across the country. They're not all located in big cities. They can be, as you say, the anchor, the cornerstone, for rural communities. Maybe something bold has to happen. It wouldn't be up to me to do it, but change some of the scope of practice rules so that a nurse or a nurse practitioner--someone like that--could visit a legion and handle a lot of things that a family physician would have handled had the family physician been there, and have access to Telehealth, to a centre that can help him or her out as a practitioner. Maybe that's a way. Maybe that's a recommendation that your committee can make.
Something needs to change in order to balance out the access to health services. With modern technology out there, and with so many trained health professionals, it may be possible to make some progress, and not just for veterans.