Mr. Speaker, the health care system in this country is now in serious crisis; five-month waits for heart surgery, thirteen-month waits for hip replacement, and increasing numbers of bed closures are now commonplace.
Every year tens of thousands of Canadians are shocked into reality when they find out timely and accessible health care is not available to them. The primary reason for this is there is not enough money to pay for the demands on our health care system.
The time for solutions is now, otherwise we will see the demise of publicly funded health care in Canada. Therefore we must define essential health care services and ensure that all Canadians are covered regardless of their financial status. We must amend the Canada Health Act to allow the provinces to work with different funding models. We must also ensure federal funds given to the provinces go to health care and are not siphoned off into other programs.
We must be innovative to work to ensure that high quality, accessible health care is available to all Canadians.