Mr. Speaker, if it is the slow bleed that kills, then our health care system, which has been hemorrhaging for some time, is in critical shape.
Sick Canadians lined up in emergency rooms wait for a vacant hospital bed while whole wards remain closed due to a lack of funds. Injured people wait one and a half years just to see a specialist and another year to get treatment. Some even die waiting to get medical care, the medical care they were led to believe would be there during their time of greatest need.
Yet the government allows, on the one hand, violations to the Canada Health Act, but on the other pretends to uphold the act in order to look like a white knight.
The government uses health care as a political football to make itself look good while patients are sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.
Is this what the government means by putting health care first? Is this what it calls its number one priority? The government must put patients first and give politics a back seat.
Patients are dying.