Mr. Chair, I will be splitting my time with the member for New Brunswick Southwest.
I would like to ask the minister about what may be the number one concern of Canadians, certainly a very high concern of Canadians, with respect to the health care system and that is the shortage of doctors and nurses.
The minister will know that about 3,800 physicians are expected to retire in the next two years. In fact in his own province of British Columbia, 200,000 British Columbians cannot find a family doctor.
Also, Canadian accreditation of internationally trained doctors is often very difficult for these individuals to obtain. With respect to nurses, over one-quarter will retire by 2006 and over half in the next 10 years. Also, only half of nurses work full time and about half work only part time.
Since Canada needs to increase the number of medical school placements and find more efficient ways to work internationally trained doctors into the system, why was this goal not explicitly targeted by federal funding that was recently offered to the provinces?