Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the hon. member and all of our colleagues across party lines on being elected. It is a huge honour for all of us and I look forward to working with everybody. I want to congratulate everybody on their great victory in being able to represent their constituents.
There are a couple of things.
First, the national medical manpower strategy ought to be implemented by working with our provinces. The Minister of Health should work with her colleagues across the country to implement a national workforce strategy.
Second, the head start program is the most effective way of preventing an array of social problems. It keeps kids at school longer, reduces youth crime by 60% and saves the taxpayer $7 for every dollar invested.
By looking at the European models of mixed systems of public and private, and we already have that in our country, we can utilize the best of both worlds to strengthen our public system and enable us to have better outcomes at a lower cost.
As time passes, the amount of money that is being spent on health care is growing and consuming vast amounts of the public purse, so much so that health care is being rationed in our country and being withheld from the public in order to save money. That cannot continue. Who pays the price? The poor and the middle class. They are the most vulnerable in our society.
Last, on the issue of poverty, so many members of our society do not have enough money for their basic needs. We had an excellent solution in our green shift to shift some moneys to those who were least privileged in our society. The government should take that on as one of the most important tasks at hand.