Madam Speaker, the people of Quebec have actually received a very large sum of money for the social programs they have. The member is quite correct that the responsibility does lie among the provinces, but it does not preclude the federal government from acting in leadership and in concert with its provincial counterparts across the country to deal with issues. While it is in the official area of responsibility of the provinces, it does not preclude the federal Minister of Health from calling her counterparts together to deal with these issues.
There is a crucial issue in health care that I want to talk about and that is the issue of access to medical professionals. We need in Canada a national medical workforce plan that is going to ensure that we have enough doctors, nurses and technicians to provide the medical care that we require. We are getting older. Our medical practitioners are getting older, too. The average age of a physician in Canada is over 50 and nurses are in the mid-40s. If we do not deal with this now we will not have the caregivers in our country to be able to provide for our citizens when they get ill.
Would the hon. member support us in working with the federal government to have and push for this national health care workforce strategy? And I hope the hon. member is feeling better.