Mr. Speaker, there is a crisis taking place in health care that nobody is talking about and that is the critical shortage of medical specialists that we are going to have in the very near future.
Take nephrology, for example. We are losing twice as many nephrologists each year than we are actually training. The majority of these kidney specialists are over the age of 50. Against this backdrop is a massively increasing demand. In fact the demand is increasing at a whopping 12% per year.
The situation is only going to worsen as our population ages and the incidence of diabetes increases. This critical shortage of specialists affects not only nephrology, but also orthopedic surgery, neurosurgery, general surgery and other medical specialists, including the nursing profession.
The failure to invest in medical specialist training today will cause the suffering and death of many Canadians tomorrow. I implore the federal government to work with the provinces to deal with this situation today for all Canadians.