Ontario Hansard - 13-December2004
DOCTOR SHORTAGE

Ms Laurie Scott (Haliburton-Victoria-Brock): My question is to the Minister of Health. My riding of Haliburton-Victoria-Brock is struggling with fewer doctors than it needs to deliver health care, and our local situation is becoming worse each month because of your failed McGuinty health scheme. The city of Kawartha Lakes is barely coping, with 15 fewer doctors than it needs. In January, a doctor in Minden is retiring and the clinic might close, orphaning thousands more patients.

My riding has the second-highest population of seniors in the province. These frail and elderly people have the highest need for health care, but you've done nothing to help them by alienating and maligning the very doctors we need to deliver the services they need. Thousands of patients across my riding will be orphaned because you are driving doctors out of Ontario and out of the profession.

The Speaker (Hon Alvin Curling): Question?

Ms Scott: Minister, I don't want to hear your platitudes. I don't want to hear your reannouncements of any of your programs. What I do want to hear is, what are you going to do to fix the doctor problem in Haliburton-Victoria-Brock?

Hon George Smitherman (Minister of Health and Long-Term Care): Apparently, based on the limitations of your question, you don't want to hear any reality either, like looking around you to the cruel reality that for eight years your party had the honour and privilege of being the government of Ontario and waited for so many of those years to enhance the capacity to produce doctors.

What have we done? When we arrived here, just as one example, Ontario had the capacity to provide residency spots on an annual basis for 65 of our international medical graduates, those foreign-trained professionals we hear about so much. Barely one year in office, there are 165 foreign-trained doctors in residency positions in Ontario today. Next year, that number will be 200.

Further, we're moving forward on an initiative to build 150 family health teams. Despite the pessimism of the honourable member, what I know for sure is that many of the communities in her very riding are lined up and have expressed interest already in one of our government's family health teams. I can only assume, as we announce them --

The Speaker: The member from Kitchener-Waterloo, supplementary.

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Kitchener-Waterloo): Once again, all we get is rhetoric. This minister once again fails to answer the question, just as the "pay more, get less" health care plan --

Interjections.

The Speaker: It must be time for Christmas with all this chatting going on. For the last time, remember, it's question period.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Supplementary, member from Kitchener-Waterloo.

1500

Mrs Witmer: As I said, once again this minister has failed to answer the question, just as your "pay more, get less" health plan has failed patients in Ontario.

Ontario's doctor shortage needs a minister who can work with, as opposed to alienating, doctors to address the issue. It has been 23 days since doctors overwhelmingly rejected your health plan. It has been 21 days since we asked you in this House what you were going to do about it. Today the public still doesn't know what your plan is to address the issue. One day you tell us you won't negotiate, then you flip-flop and say you will. Then the Premier, on Saturday in the Star, says you won't negotiate.

Minister, will you now admit you bungled the deal with the doctors and made a mistake in trying to impose an agreement on the 24,000 doctors? When are you going to officially resume negotiations, and when do you intend to have a deal in place so we can address the doctor shortage?

Hon Mr Smitherman: The honourable member, herself the Minister of Health in this province for three years, can't stand up and ask a supplementary; she has to read it. The idea that we've got 100 more international medical graduates today being given residency spots, which is one small step away from being in service to Ontarians -- she calls that rhetoric; I call that progress for Ontarians.

On the matter of our work with the Ontario Medical Association, I'm very pleased to confirm for the honourable member that as of Saturday morning, we've been involved in very fruitful conversations.