Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his work on bringing the issue of palliative care in front of Parliament.
I had the privilege of being part of an all-party committee that discussed and studied palliative care for many months. We wrote a report called “Not to be Forgotten: Care of Vulnerable Canadians”. We toured a number of facilities in Canada and saw the great work that many of these heroes who worked in palliative care did. I want to commend them for that great work.
One of the aspects that I think is missing in the subject matter today is this five-month period of up to the end of July to come up with some credible solutions. My feeling is that we need more time to do that kind of work. Maybe we could have done it sooner. We could all take the blame for that.
However, we are here now. My colleague used the phrase many times during his speech “we have an opportunity now”. I could not agree more, but to take advantage of that opportunity, I feel we need more than five months to do that. Would my colleague agree that it would be better for us to take more time, study it more deeply, come up with some possible solutions, even to the palliative care patchwork that currently exists in Canada?