Madam Speaker, it is great to be in the House, as always.
I want to talk about doctors in Canada. I have a tremendous doctor in my constituency. He is my personal doctor, Dr. Van de Linde, who has been recognized for his commitment to the community. In the past, I was involved in a regional health board and met a lot of doctors in my area and community. They are fantastic people.
My doctor has given me some information that I think is really important at this time. I understand that health is part of the provincial mandate. I understand colleges of physicians and the role they play in every province as far as recognizing credentials for doctors goes. However, here is some information that my doctor shared with me: According to a survey of the Canadian Medical Association, 91% of physicians supported national licensure and believed that it would improve care for patients; 45% of physicians reported that if national licensure existed, they would work in other provinces to support their colleagues in times of need, as with COVID; 42% were willing to go to rural areas and remote regions; and 30% would do it again on an ongoing basis.
As we have seen in this particular time, this kind of move would be extremely interesting to pursue. I understand colleges of physicians and I understand the provincial mandate with health. However, we have a tremendous number of people with skills and licensing who have the mobility to move quickly from province to province. If we have an ice storm in Quebec, there are all sorts of tradespeople who can move from one province to another and to an area. We have significant professions that can move from province to province very quickly. However, for a doctor to do it, to be recertified in a different province, they are going back and looking for high school marks. At times it takes months to move from province to province. I think this is significant and we should be looking at it, especially as we come out of COVID. Doctors know it would mean better health care, and we need to follow their advice.
There is a different health topic that I would like to bring up: hotel quarantines. I think this was a boondoggle from the start. I have heard stories from constituents who had to pile furniture up in doorways of hotels because the locks had been removed. We have heard stories of people being loaded in vans with a whole lot of other people sitting side by side, and going to hotel lobbies crowded with people who are supposed to be in hotel quarantine. Some of those people in the hotel are in regular rooms.
An advisory committee suggested approximately 10 days ago that the hotel quarantine needed to be scrapped because rules are not being enforced in two of the four areas. It should be scrapped. It was not an idea that worked to begin with. It does not work. As the committee said, people are better off to quarantine at their homes if they are going to. It also said that if people are vaccinated somewhere else and are coming into Canada, quarantine should not be enforced either.
We have an advisory committee for the government that said we should change this and get rid of it. What did the government do? It increased the fines, which are enforced in only two out of the four provinces. Hotel quarantines should be gone.