Health committee  I can tell you just even in terms of my own family life, as my wife works at Women's College where they have an electronic medical record system. She's up for hours just inputting patient medications, making sure she faxes the note to the appropriate physicians and typing in the fax numbers.

Health committee  I think it's new models of care that are important. I think we have to start to look for those ways in which we can balance the specialist being in the big city where we have all the tools to do our work but supporting the rural communities so that care can be delivered there. The challenge is that we can only do so much and there's a lot of that work that is just part of being the physician but not necessarily remunerated, not necessarily as our physician remuneration but also to the hospital system remuneration.

Health committee  The MR-Linac technology was one we brought here as the first in Canada to try to gain a technological platform to reduce the number of treatments. Instead of six weeks of radiation, now we can do it in one week. What's important here is how we got that technology. We had to raise money through philanthropy.

Health committee  I would just say the point that was brought up was that equipping these rural communities with services so that physicians can do their jobs will reduce the stress on the physicians and that will improve burnout rates. We have to remember that if the system is not providing that CAT scan, it's still the physician who has the medical responsibility for the patient.

Health committee  I will say one thing we have noted during the pandemic as a result of the delays is that cancers are much more advanced than they ever were before. The things we see are horrendous and we never saw those. We're all trying to work to catch up. The hours are really quite long and we need more staff.

Health committee  Thank you very much, MP Sidhu. I think one issue is the ICU beds. We definitely have to increase the ICU capacity and then the surgeries can happen. Alongside the increase in ICU capacity, we need the staffing. That's where we're starting to fail. We don't have the nurses and the staff to manage the patients post-surgery.

Health committee  I would just say it's very important to bring in the appropriate professionals, but it's not necessarily just about bringing them in and them going into the workforce. We have to have a system that can train them so that no matter where they are, patients and communities are receiving the same level of care as if it was a trained physician as a Canadian, going through the Canadian medical system.

Health committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is an honour to speak to you today. I am Dr. Arjun Sahgal. I work at the Sunnybrook Odette Cancer Centre of the University of Toronto. Today I am representing myself, as a Canadian physician and professor of radiation oncology, subspecialized in the treatment of brain and spinal tumours.