But it is also a fact of life that the less populated parts of Canada tend to fall behind when it comes to population health. Last fall, I met with Dr. Keith McClelland, President of the Rural Physicians Association of Canada. Dr. McClelland introduced me to some facts and figures that I found really quite disturbing. There are fewer specialists available in rural areas than there are in large metropolitan centres. There are fewer mental health facilities.
Emergency rooms are scarcer and smaller, and many forms of home care are unavailable.
Although direct responsibility for the delivery of medical services rests with the provinces, Health Canada has an important role to play in addressing this Canadian issue. Let me tell you about some of the things we're doing. First, we are learning as much as we can as quickly as we can about how we can improve the situation. Much of that money will be spent in rural Canada testing new ways of paying doctors, better ways of delivering health services through health practitioners and other professionals, different ways of making home care and community care available for people who have just left hospital and who are chronically ill. Perhaps most exciting of all, we are going to invest in ways to make use of modern technology to improve the availability of health services in rural and remote communities.