Mr. Chairman, I listened intently to my hon. colleague's comments and his answers to the last questions. He spent the majority of his presentation talking about the shortage of human resources in health care.
There is no question that one of the most acute problems we have in this country is the fact that two-thirds of our medical practitioners refuse to take on any new patients. We have a critical problem across Canada. However it is a problem that we have known about. It is a problem that the government has known about and was told about a decade ago. Money was pulled out of health care and the number of placements in universities and teaching facilities was cut. This was a recipe for disaster. We knew it would happen and here we are.
It takes 10 years to train doctors. We have a major problem dealing with this. We have a problem not so much with them staying in Canada and going from province to province but we have a problem with them going from Canada to the United States. There is a shortage of doctors around the world. A great number of physicians come from South Africa and Cuba.
Has the member thought about more than just the tax incentive? Being in close proximity to the problem in rural Alberta my experience in dealing with this issue is that it is much more than just money that keeps physicians at home. I would be interested in the member's comments on that.