Finance committee  Thank you. Over the past year, the Canadian Medical Association has engaged in a wide-ranging public consultation on health care, and we have heard from thousands of Canadians about their concerns. This exercise provided a road map for modernizing our country's health care syste

Health committee  I think you have to take mental illness out of the closet, quite honestly. People go to work and they say they've taken three days off because they twisted their ankle or they've got a cold or a runny nose. No one's going to say they had a bout of depression and took to their bed

Health committee  I would suggest that what you're talking about is not education purely and simply; it's actually changing people's behaviours. Education is simply a component of that. The medical profession and the professions that are represented here are simply people who can provide the infor

Health committee  I think the federal role in health care, which is kind of the message I took from your question, is that it has several. It's the international voice of Canada on the world health stage. It has a responsibility as far as I would see it, on behalf of our members, to provide an eve

Health committee  That sounds like one for me. The Canadian Medical Association went out over the last year and spoke to Canadians about what they wanted from their health care system. We spoke to about 2,400 people face-to-face, and we had another 4,000 comments online. We produced a variety of

Health committee  No. I think I would really just echo what has been said. I don't know that there's an awful lot more I can add, quite frankly.

Health committee  In my province, 35% of the practitioners currently in practice are within five years of retirement, if you take 65 as a retirement date. However, what is happening is that a significant number of those practitioners are not retiring in the way the generation before them did. They

Health committee  I can only echo that. I think it's very much a patchwork. There are hot spots where there are local centres that have focused on dementia care, but they are little oases in a desert otherwise.

Health committee  Just to take up Barb's point a little bit, I would go back to the issue of education. Somebody once said “You give me the child, and I'll give you the man”. Essentially, if you go back to school and can become a health-literate graduate of high school, by which I mean someone who

Health committee  It is. In one sentence, I think the system has to be responsible and accountable to the person who funds it, which is the Canadian patient, the Canadian taxpayer, and there are various ways you could do that. But yes, I agree.

Health committee  I'll have a crack at that. My own jurisdiction is Newfoundland. Telehealth, which Bob mentioned, is being pioneered by a unit in Labrador, where they've had challenges delivering health care to rural communities. It has made a big difference. Again, it's a question of multiple s

Health committee  I'll try to take a bite of that one, because I don't think there's a magic bullet there either. But I think if you look at the elderly poor, which was where I took your question started from, they start poor younger. The causes of poverty are interlinked with growing up in povert

Health committee  I just spent two days in Fraser Valley Health Authority at a meeting on medical makeover. The whole issue of payments boils down to two things: what you want to pay for and how you want to get it. The second thing is there is no perfect system. What you have to do is pick the sys

Health committee  Thank you very much for the invitation, members of the committee. The Canadian Medical Association wishes to commend the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health for undertaking this study of the issue of chronic diseases related to aging. It is a timely issue, since the fi