Mr. Speaker, I will just correct my hon. friend, the hon. parliamentary, on a couple of points. I do not want to use up all my time on that, but I was speaking about a national health care workforce strategy, yes, for physicians, but also for nurses and technicians, and other health care professionals. There is an age-out occurring in all of those areas.
When we were in government, my colleague, the member for Vancouver East, put forth with the then prime minister a plan to bring in a $50-million plan to facilitate many new physicians who were here into the workforce, which was accomplished.
We are asking for governments to work with other health care professional groups to deal with a national workforce health care plan.
On the issue of the right to access and the public good, governments have a right and an obligation to ensure that products that are on the market are not going to be harmful.
There is an interesting thought that just because something is “natural”, it is in fact safe. The reality is that many of the drugs that we receive as prescriptions have natural products as their root. Digoxin, digitalis, which is a cardiac drug, comes from a plant. The narcotic family, which is codeine and other more powerful narcotics, also comes from plant products. There are many other products that come from plant products.
The job of Health Canada is to act as a guardian in the public interest. But there is a balance. That is what we want to make sure, that when this bill goes to committee that that balance will be struck and that Canadians will have access to safe products, there will be proper oversight on the part of the Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada, and also that the government will have the power to remove those substances that are injurious to the public.