Madam Speaker, we have been hearing from Canadians across the board. We have had communications from Prince Edward Island. We have had petitions from Vancouver Island. As a matter of fact we have almost 33,000 signatures on petitions that are at the clerk of petition's office right now. Unfortunately it does take time to process so many and they were not ready to be presented in the House today. Those largely came from Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. I know that more are coming. As news of this initiative spreads, I know we will be hearing from more Canadians across the country.
I am hearing impassioned responses. I even had one call from Virginia. People are concerned about this issue. It is Canadians I am concerned about because they deserve the right to be well. The products that are being withheld from them by the directorate are products that build healthy Canadians.
Healthy Canadians are not the ones who fall victims to diseases. If they have a strong immune system, they are not the ones ending up in the emergency wards. They are not the ones who are developing the chronic degenerative diseases. They save Canadians money.
I have a little anecdote in talking about the two models, the disease management model and the remediation prevention model. A physician in my riding spoke to a rotary club and I happened to be in attendance. It was during the rotating strikes in medical offices.
The first remark he made stuck in my mind. He said that physicians are tired of being accused of not being more proactive in wellness and prevention. He said that they are not trained for that, that they are trained to fight sickness and disease and there is lots of it out there. That is how he started his presentation. It made an impression on me. If I could have, I would have liked to interrupt him to say, “But Doc, do you not get it? All the early interventions gag the signs of failure in the early stages”.
If we have a fever we take an antipyretic. If we have a pain we take an analgesic. If we have a muscle spasm, we take a muscle relaxant. All of the early interventions are designed to gag the symptoms. What has become of us as Canadians is that our health care system has become a school of firefighters specializing in smashing alarms rather than addressing the real problem.
Unfortunately the remediation and prevention side of treatment is largely outside the public financing domain. People have to pay to see chiropractors for their back pain, which by the way, health care economists tell us could save about $2 billion annually rather than looking to drugs and surgery to solve a problem that is largely biomechanical. Canadians are paying to see naturopaths. They are paying to see massage therapists. Sadly, it seems the remediation and prevention side of things is largely outside the disease management system of payment.
We need to see a genuine synthesis of treatment options. Canadians need the right to get treatments that work. They need access to simple, natural health care products that ameliorate their condition, that build healthy bodies and keep them well. That will significantly relate to the health care expenditures we have.
Frankly, Mr. Romanow did not have an answer when I asked him the question. He basically said that he had heard that from Canadians but that it is really up to the provinces to decide how to spend their money. My point is that the provinces are so strapped feeding a disease management model they have not got the money to invest where the savings are in prevention and remediation. We need to reconsider what we are doing in Canadians' interest.