Mr. Speaker, we know that patients wait for hours in over-crowded emergency rooms. Millions of Canadians cannot even find a doctor. Families cannot afford the medications they need. Seniors are waiting a long time for a long term care plan. Our party has some plans and here are some of the suggestions that we want to offer.
We need more doctors and nurses. That is why we need to create more training spaces for health care providers and expand the pools of skilled professionals to shorten wait times for patients. We need to offer real dignity for seniors, provide free dental care and drug coverage, and long term care so we can free up hospital beds.
We need to have real innovations. We have to control drug costs and phase in a national prescription drug strategy to help families afford the medications they need.
In order to lower wait times, the key is to forge a new deal with the provinces that would link reliable federal health transfers to a commitment that such funds would not subsidize for profit health care.
My question is actually very straightforward. Would the member support a long term federal health transfer that would be contingent on no federal money being used to cover the salaries or costs of doctors and other medical personnel involved in a new separate profit making private insurance system?