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| Today's families expect quality health care for everyone - not just for those who can afford to buy it.
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| Thursday
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Question # 1
The riding of Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke is suffering a severe shortage in the number of family physicians accessible to area residents. This situation is having a dramatic negative impact on the quality of life of thousands of people and is a detriment to economic development for area municipalities. What will you and your party do to assist in the recruitment of family physicians and, how will you help end this erosion of our fundamental right to primary health care?
Response:
Today's families expect quality health care for everyone - not just for those who can afford to buy it. That's why the NDP's Tommy Douglas created public Medicare, and that's why New Democrats are working to secure this vital health and social program. The consistent support of the right of people to better health care is why a person like me who work in the health care field chose to run for the NDP.
Health is a real issue in the riding of Renfrew Nipissing Pembroke. We have some of the worst rates of heart disease, stroke and diabetes in all of Canada. For example, men in Renfrew County live almost two years less than other Ontarians and women live nearly one year less.
We are also one of the poorest ridings in Ontario and research has shown that poverty and poor health go hand-in-hand.
All areas in the riding are desperately short of doctors and 45 of those we have will be retiring over the next 5 years. Successive liberal and conservative governments have done little to tackle the problems.
Wait times are exploding, there's a nursing shortage, and five million Canadians can't find a family doctor. Lacking dignified long-term care spaces, seniors languish in scarce hospital beds. Families like yours will shell out $4-billion on prescriptions this year - and one in five face ruin if illness strikes because they don't have adequate enough drug coverage. Yet Stephen Harper just shrugs as for-profit clinics proliferate, bleeding more resources from the public system most of us rely on.
Stephen Harper broke his election promise to implement a "Comprehensive Patient Wait Times Guarantee"- stopping at a handful of small provincial pilot projects that leave most patients out in the cold.
He provided no concrete leadership that could shorten wait times system-wide - no plan to train more doctors and nurses; and no plan to create long-term care spaces or expand home care coverage.
Instead of working to control runaway drug costs, Stephen Harper extended brand-name drug companies' monopoly rights by three years - boosting their profits by delaying public access to cheaper generics for even longer. He won't stop the creeping US-style privatization of Canadian Medicare - refusing to enforce the Canada Health Act when private clinics for the wealthy bled professionals from the public system.
Before he became Prime Minister, Stephen Harper promoted a US for-profit system - where a fatter wallet means better care and 45 million Americans have no health coverage at all. A system where insurance companies get rich and patients get poor. We don't want that system in Canada. We want a Prime Minister who will fix our system.
The Liberals had fifteen years to fix the system and they did nothing.
The NDP are committed to improving and modernizing health care, and reducing wait times for you and your family by:
* Training 1,200 new doctors and 6,000 additional nurses each year.
* Giving doctors and nurses financial incentives to move to rural areas.
* Consistently pressing for more long-term care spaces and expanded home care coverage -to offer seniors dignity in their later years and take pressure off scarce hospital beds.
* Recognizing the credentials of foreign-trained health professionals.
* Launching a plan to phase in universal prescription drug coverage to protect families from soaring costs.
Question #2
What is your position on the issue of foreign dumping of forestry products in the Canadian market. For example, American red pine and white pine is flooding the market. How would your party address this issue?
Response:
I deal with forestry workers and their families every day in my work in the health care field. They are tough, independent and resilient people and they need all of those characteristics to survive in the forestry sector in these times.
The forestry sector is key to the economic health of Renfrew County, and Canada as a whole. The logging industry has been neglected in this area.
The Liberals closed the Forest Research Centre near Chalk River and the Conservatives have chosen to give $50 billion in tax breaks to large corporations, most of which are US based, instead of supporting our local small and medium sized forestry operations.
Nearly 400 mills across Canada have closed in just 4 years. In Renfrew Nipissing Pembroke we have seen layoffs and threatened closures at Commonwealth Plywood and other operations. Local logging operations are struggling to find buyers and keep their loggers on the job.
Logging in Renfrew County is done in a sustainable manner which provides new growth and prevents forest fires. We have a valuable resource. What we need is a plan and the political will to promote this sector.
Families in forestry communities have been hit hard. The forest products industry is one of Canada's leading industries shipping over $40 billion of goods annually.
Forestry jobs are good jobs. The average wage per employee was $46,300 in 2005; the national average wage per employee is $37,900 and each of these jobs creates an estimated 4 additional spin-off jobs.
Since Stephen Harper's election 34,602 jobs have been lost in the forest sector.
Under Harper's softwood lumber agreement, Stephen Harper compelled Canadian softwood companies to hand over to the United States $1 billion of the $5.3 billion in duty deposits illegally collected by the United States Customs as a result of the softwood lumber dispute.
Nearly half of that amount goes to the White House and the Bush Administration to be distributed as it pleases. Another $500 million will be provided to the US Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports.
Harper has also allowed the export of raw logs to the US and Asia, depriving Canadian workers desperately needed value-added jobs.
The New Democrats have a plan which would:
* Serve the United States with their six months notice that Canada will be withdrawing from the Softwood Lumber Agreement. This would immediately end the dumping of US forest products in Canadian markets.
* Re-negotiate lumber issues as part of broader talks on NAFTA.
* Restrict raw log exports to encourage local economic development. Logs processed in community mills will help protect Canadian jobs and promote an innovative value-added forestry sector.
* Through a sectoral strategy for the forest sector Jack Layton will work with industry, labour, provinces and territories to make strategic investments and expand product exports.
* Protect jobs by appointing a Jobs Protection Commissioner to step in when there's a major layoff or shutdown, and work with workers, the employer, banks and community to maintain employment and;
* Establish a $1billion emergency fund for one-sector towns to bring new industry and new markets to the forestry sector.
Question # 3
Today's agricultural industry is much different from that of our predecessors, global markets, local markets, organic markets, supply managed markets, open markets, etc. Other factors with impact include labour shortages, outsider commodity market manipulation, unreasonable input cost escalation etc.
Today's agricultural professional must remain competitive in a vastly more complex system.
What assurance can your party provide to ensure that these long-standing issues with the agricultural sector will be competently handled and resolved? How do you propose to make a significant difference for agriculture within your term of office?
Response:
The family farm has been in serious difficulty for many years now. The numbers of family farms have steadily declined in Renfrew County and across Canada. Young people are no longer taking up farming because they see no future in it. It doesn't have to be this way.
Successive governments across Canada, both liberal and conservative, have made bad choices in agricultural policy. They have consistently favoured the reduction of agricultural subsidies at the international level.
They have eliminated price support programs in Canada while our foreign competitors in the United States and Europe have maintained or increased theirs. While the Harper government was reducing support for family farms they were giving $50 billion in tax breaks to large corporations most of which are foreign-owned.
Our farmers deserve a break. They deserve a level playing field.
The New Democrats will ensure that the preservation of orderly Canadian marketing systems.
We will work with farm organizations and provincial governments to implement income stabilization programs that are consistent with our international trade obligations and approaches, tailored for each commodity sector, and focused on the family farms that most need the support.
The New Democrats will implement a Canadian organic food and agriculture strategy which will:
* Ban the use of Terminator seeds and protect every farmer's right to choose, save and control their seeds.
* Provide transition funding for education, equipment and training for farmers who wish to shift to organic or bio-intensive integrated pest management systems of agriculture.
* Support for independent agricultural extension workers to facilitate environmentally friendly farming methods, including low tillage, water conservation and reduced fertilizer and pesticide use.
* Redress the imbalances of economic power between producers and agri-business corporations, including limiting meatpackers' ownership of cattle, by adding new provisions to the Competition Act.
* Support the development of more producer-run cooperatives to act as a counterweight to the power of multinational agribusiness giants, and to encourage more value-added processing and jobs in Canada.
* Entrench the Canadian Wheat Board as the single desk marketer for Canadian wheat and barley, and commit Canadian policy to the principle of orderly marketing systems for commodity sectors.
* Improve access to farm safety net funding for natural disasters and poor markets, particularly for small farms.
The NDP first flourished in the small farm communities of the Prairies. We won't forget our farming roots and we won't forget farmers. source
How to Become a Nurse |
posted by blogger @ 14:55
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