Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in regard to the reports and the issue of health care and service, one of the things we hear a lot of, especially from a lot of our communities and for people in the communities, is allowing people to build capacity in the communities and also to work with the health providers, the people within the area of health and social services and education and deal with the whole area of community wellness and ensuring that people realize there are choices we can make as individuals.
For a lot of these lifestyle choices we make, a lot of people do not realize that just by doing the little things, the nutritional value of the type of food you eat, being able to deal with the social problems we have in a lot of our communities, a lot of it is in regard to alcoholism and drug abuse and smoking and other areas. I think we have to do more on the side of prevention. I think we have to ensure that we give people those tools and work with the health providers, so people do not realize that you only have to go...every time there is a problem, you run to the RCMP or you run to the nursing station. We have to work out a system so that each of these different areas accommodates the other area to simplify the different areas, especially when it comes to health care and prevention.
We spend a lot of money just trying to maintain the system we have. I think we have to somehow find a way to allow for people and people within our communities and organizations to work with them to find solutions in the communities, and also within the health care system, to find ways of prevention. I think what we see is there are a lot of cases where you start seeing sugar diabetes, liver disease, cancers and different things like that. A lot of it has to do with those lifestyle choices that we make.
I think if you are not able to make those changes, we will continue to pay a lot of money into the institutions where we see the vast amount of money going, especially in regard to the health care system. The pressures that are on it now cannot continue to be burdened without having a means of changing what we are doing.
I think it is important that we find a way to work with the system, but also to find ways of changing the system so it is more user-friendly to communities, to the health care professions, and people within our social services system.
I think as a government, we have not done justice to that, where we seem to continue to say we are putting money into it, but I think we are putting money into it as a way of saying balance your budgets, watch your deficits and what not. We have to realize that there have been changes in the government as we know it.
We have done away with a lot. We only have the one alcohol and drug facility, for instance, and there is a strain on that program. We have people within our communities, especially people within the health care system, who seem to be responsible for all things relating to health care, from trying to be a counsellor to dealing with day-to-day illnesses, such as the flu, to giving people needles, people who are ill, dealing with the elders. Each one of those areas has a different type of responsibility, but we do have to find a way to streamline that system so we are not compounding the problem we already have.
One of the things you hear a lot of is that we have to allow the people to build capacity by getting the people who are needed to assist in the area of mental health, nutrition, and dealing with the elders in regard to allowing for programs to assist in those different areas, to take the strain off the system. You cannot expect people who are trained in one field to try to do something they are totally not qualified for or not responsible for that area.
We have to look at this problem as a community, a regional and a government problem, where we have to work in each of the different areas to find prevention.
As a government, we continue to do studies and strategies and try to find ways of working with the system that we have. It seems like the government, for some reason, is not taking that extra step to work with the people within the different areas, from health care to social services to education to community counsellors to mental health workers, to see exactly how can we make their jobs a lot easier but also work in conjunction with each other, so we know what the right hand is doing in regard to the left hand.
I think as a government, what we have done is we have basically developed a system where everything seems to be in tubes in regard to "You are responsible for this, and you are over there and you are responsible for that and you are over there" and no one seems to be coordinating what is going on within the system. I think that is what is lacking here.
We have to find a system where we have that connection and that coordination, especially when it comes to small communities. There are a lot of pressures on our health care providers in our small communities because they become the counsellors. They become the people who are responsible for the day-to-day things. If you are the one who is a front-line worker trying to make some of these decisions, never mind trying to do your job but also taking on other responsibilities or other pressures in most other cases because you do not have people with that expertise there to help you, such as someone with the counselling skills or mental health skills or nutrition skills.
To be able to work with these people to say that if you do not change the way you live your lives, or basically you want to realize that the constant pressures on us as a society, because we have an older population, we have a lot of people with sugar diabetes, those pressures are starting to catch up with us. Unless we change the whole idea of how we educate not only ourselves but our children in the schools and the people in our communities that they have to make these changes and adjustments to ensure we have a health care system that is healthy. We need healthy people. We also need healthy minds and healthy economies in communities in order to make this work.
As a government, we sometimes try to basically look at health care strictly as a hospital, a doctor and a nurse. It is more than that. We have to work towards improving that system so it works holistically in conjunction with the whole community, in regard to ensuring we find ways to take these pressures out of the health care system and the people in that system, but also finding a new system that works in conjunction with other areas.
To the Minister, in regard to the question, I think we have to find a system to build this capacity but also build it in such a way that it actually makes a difference to the way the system is running now. Thank you.