QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Health
Delays in Medical Care
February 9, 2022
Minister Duclos, your home province of Quebec has said that it will take at least two years to reduce their backlog of surgeries to pre-pandemic levels. In my province of Nova Scotia, the senior director of the cancer care program recently said that even if COVID-19 went away tomorrow it will take years to catch up on the backlog of patients needing care and to rebuild the system.
This past Friday, the provincial premiers asked your government to increase the Canada Health Transfer. What are you going to do to help Nova Scotia and all provinces to overcome these challenges?
Thank you. It is a much-appreciated question.
Some estimates suggest there have been 1 million surgeries either delayed or cancelled over the past few months because of the impact of COVID-19. There are approximately 5 million Canadians who don’t have access to primary care through, for instance, a family doctor, and that has been worsened by the pandemic.
That is why we were there, and we needed to be there, during the pandemic with an investment of $63 billion in health, in addition to the Canada Health Transfer, which will increase from $43 billion to $45 billion in a few weeks, then to $49 billion, and then to $51 billion and $53 billion, by the way. So in just about three or four years, it will have increased by 25%. That is in addition to the things we promised we would do during the campaign in support of, as you said, not only repairing the system but also preparing the system for possible and almost certain future waves and variants of the pandemic.
