If my hon. colleague from the NDP would quick heckling long enough, she might hear what I have to say. I listened very intently to the comments of the member for Red Deer about what we really needed in Canada. He did a great job of fleshing out the alliance position and providing some real direction for the government if only it were willing to listen.
Let us look at the legacy of Liberal health care funding cuts in my riding of Prince George—Peace River. As many members House know, my riding covers nearly a quarter of the land mass of British Columbia. The communities in my constituency are isolated in relation to those in the rest of the country. Access to adequate health care is not only hampered by geography but by funding as well.
A surgeon must go through a check list of criteria before an operation, so let us look at the check list for health care in Prince George—Peace River. The average ratio of doctors to patients in Canada is about one to a thousand. Yet in my riding it is one to fifteen hundred. Universality, I do not think so.
There is a need for over twelve full time nurses, at least two general practitioners, two internists, an orthopedic surgeon and a general surgeon. There is one orthopedic surgeon to service 68,000 people. The waiting lists for an appointment to see him takes a year, not to mention the wait for the actual operation. The same 68,000 people have access to only one OBGYN surgeon and one psychiatrist. There is such a shortage of nurses that beds are being closed. The critical care unit in Fort St. John, my home town, is contemplating closing due to staffing shortages. There are also shortages of physiotherapist and pharmacists.
This problem is more than just money, despite what the NDP is saying. It is about taxes, access to education, immigration barriers for medical professionals from other countries and the brain drain. Those are all contributing factors to the critical shortage.
Rural Canadians need more than platitudes from the health minister. They need the federal government to take a leadership role and stop playing politics with the health of Canadians. I can say as the representative of a huge rural riding that this is not unique just to northern British Columbia. The problem is inherent from coast to coast to coast, but it is especially reaching epidemic proportions in rural Canada. We need some answers and some assistance from the federal government. For too long it has sloughed it off to the provinces.
I would be interested in hearing specifically from my colleague, the health critic for the Canadian Alliance, what his thoughts are about the problems of health care in rural Canada and the fallacy of the universality of the Canada Health Act.