Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise on behalf of Kitchener Centre to speak to this really important issue.
I think we can all agree that every Canadian should be able to access quality health care when they need it, without waiting and regardless of where they live and what they earn. Unfortunately, that is not the reality of our current health care system. Canadians are struggling to find a family doctor. They are waiting months if not years to see specialists. They join long wait lists for surgeries and imaging. Emergency rooms are overcrowded, and patients spend hours waiting even to be assessed. For too many Canadians, the challenge is simply accessing health care. While we can all agree that our health care system is worth protecting, it cannot mean defending something that is failing too many Canadians.
Canadian taxpayers spend an enormous amount of money on their own health care. Taxpayers will spend $57 billion in 2026-27, and Canadians are still left waiting for proper care for their investment. Do members know that Canada ranks last among 10 similar countries with respect to timely access to health care? Only one in four Canadians gets an appointment with a doctor or nurse the day they need it. Most Canadians wait two months or longer to see a specialist.
We have to ask ourselves how we can make our system work better. It is not just about how much money we put into health care. It is about its effectiveness. How do we support health care professionals, and how do we improve the outcomes for all Canadians?
Let us imagine that somebody from Kitchener decides to travel across this beautiful country to Alberta. Maybe they are visiting family, enjoying a family vacation or travelling for work. Then, unexpectedly, they have a heart attack. They are taken to the ER, and the doctors treating them need to know their medical history, such as what medications they are taking, if they have any allergies, if they have had any previous surgeries or if there are any underlying issues or conditions that could affect their treatment. The patient is lucky enough to have a family doctor in Ontario, but their medical records are not in the same system as Alberta's, and the hospital cannot access them.
What happens now? The patient literally cannot provide their health information if they have had a heart attack. They cannot give their history. They cannot give their allergies or the pertinent information the doctors may need in that exact moment. The doctors now are spending time trying to access the patient's information instead of immediately caring for them. Tests may be needed or repeated, and information is not available. All this is happening while the individual is not getting the care they need. Would it not make more sense if the patient's medical information could just follow them so surgeons would immediately be able to operate on them, potentially saving lives?
A colleague just shared a story with me. A man and his wife were travelling across the country, and they got in a car accident. Because of that car accident, the gentleman needed immediate surgery, and his wife was unconscious. Right on the roadside, penicillin was administered to the man during the operation, but unfortunately he was allergic to the penicillin and passed away. Data transfer can literally save lives in this country.
We have already invested in medical records across this country. More than 95% of physicians use electronic medical records today, but that is not the same as having a connected system. A doctor might have a patient's entire medical history on their computer, but if the doctor treating them next door does not have that same information, we have a problem. Only 29% of primary care providers make patient information available outside their own practice. Only a quarter of practitioners make that information available outside that practice. This leaves 75% of the population without records that can be immediately accessed so patients can get immediate care in the times they need it.
This costs Canadian taxpayers an extra $9.4 billion a year. Let us think about that. Billions of dollars are being lost because the information that already exists on a system somewhere is not being accessed by someone right next door. Patients are undergoing repeat tests. Health care professionals are spending extra time tracking down records. Important information is being missed when patients move between providers.
Doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health care professionals should be spending their time caring for patients, and that is it. They should not be spending their time trying to access information that already exists on another system. It is a complete waste of, first, the physician's time and, second, the immediate access to care for patients who immediately need it. Not having to chase down medical records or repeat work that has already been done would only help the care of patients here in Canada. We should be giving physicians the tools they need to do their jobs, not making their jobs more difficult by repeatedly investigating the care that a particular person may need.
There is a tremendous opportunity with the bill, but there are a lot of questions behind the scenes. We do need to make sure that the details are right with this piece of legislation, because Canadians need to be able to access their own data, and we do need actual improvements for Canadians. This cannot just be another measure where we are saying that we are going to be doing something in Parliament but not actually working with the provinces and territories to make sure that it is implemented across Canada.
We have questions that we need to ask, and as we move forward, we will ensure that we ask these questions in committee.
Provinces and territories are responsible for their own health care systems. As the federal government, we need to respect the role of the provinces. We should be working with them to make sure that health information can be shared across provinces in a way that all provinces agree with. We have to ensure that we are not going to be encroaching on provincial territory when we are trying to implement a system to access care across systems. This is a key important piece of this legislation that we need to look at.
We need to understand how the bill would work with the systems that are already in place and make sure provinces still have a say in how these changes are made. We know that different practitioners use different systems, so what does that mean for the current systems that practitioners are already using? Are they going to be able to keep these systems or are they going to need to move to a different system? None of these questions have any answers to them yet, and these are the things we are going to look at.