Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague for Macleod on his maiden speech in the House. I understand that he is a very renowned surgeon. I do not know if that is an exaggeration or not, but I was told that.
I was kind of curious when he mentioned the drain that Canada has had in its medical profession. That has been going on for a number of years. We invested in 600, 700 or 800 highly trained people and then lost them.
Does he see any simple solution to that? For what reasons would highly trained Canadian professionals leave their country and go to a neighbouring country? There must be some attraction there. I am sure the hon. member for Macleod has wondered about that. I have wondered about it. I know that some of them come back. What did they go for in the first place? After a while did they get disillusioned? What brings them back to Canada? What could we be doing in our system to discourage them from going in the first place? Do we not have enough resources to accommodate them? Do we not pay them enough? I do not know. I am asking the question.
Perhaps the hon. member for Macleod as a professional, a doctor, would like to give his interpretation of that problem. It is a big problem in this country to lose those highly trained, highly specialized and very expensive people from our society.