Madam Speaker, I am rising again to question the government on its lack of investments to ensure every Canadian has access to a family doctor. No Canadian should need to use a credit card to access basic health services in this country.
The House will recall, of course, that the NDP has been instrumental in this Parliament in ensuring we start to broaden health care, including dental care and pharmacare, and pushing for home care and mental health care as well. This has been a fundamental priority of the NDP since Tommy Douglas, the founding leader of the NDP, pushed Parliament 70 years ago to put in place universal health care in Canada. When he forced the government of the day to bring in universal health care, he always envisaged that we would move from there to dental care and pharmacare to ensure that, essentially, we have health care from the top of our heads to the soles of our feet.
This makes sense for a whole variety of reasons. When we have comprehensive health care, there is less of an impact on acute health care. For example, putting in place pharmacare means saving $4 billion for Canadians. Putting in place dental care, according to emergency room physicians in Ontario alone, saves about $1 billion a year as Canadians have to show up at the emergency room when they do not have access to dental care.
It is fundamentally important that, if a health care system is going to work, we make the required investments to ensure Canadians have access to a family doctor and are not paying extra fees. The government has been very slow on that. It has been quicker on what the NDP has forced it to do. When it comes to the number of Canadians who do not have a family physician, there has been very little work put into play. This is a criticism not just of the Liberal government but also of the Conservative government, which did absolutely nothing for a decade either.
The reality is very simple. We need to see more investments to ensure there are more spaces in our universities and medical schools to train doctors and nurses. We need to ensure the funding is there so we get the health care professionals we need. We cannot stop there. We have to recognize foreign-trained credentials as well. There are so many foreign-trained doctors and nurses who come to Canada whose credentials are not recognized because the current and previous governments did not do the work to put in place all of the infrastructure for those credentials to be recognized here.
For those who would criticize and say it would cost a lot of money, I will mention a few of the investments the government has made, and the previous government as well. Between both Conservatives and Liberals, there was $1 trillion in liquidity supports for Canada's big banks, $600 billion going to overseas tax havens over the last 15 years and $100 billion going to oil and gas CEOs over the last 15 years.
The reality is Canada can afford it. We need to make sure health care investments come before the banks, the oil and gas CEOs, and overseas tax savings. Why is the government not putting health care first?