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8- The Oakville Beaver, Friday October 3, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com Oakville candidates respond to health care question As part of its election coverage, The Oakville Beaver will be asking each of the candidates in the Oakville and Halton ridings to respond to a weekly question. The Oakville riding responses will be published each Friday and the Halton riding responses will be published in the Saturday Weekend edition. This week's question is: : What will your party do to ensure that Oakville residents will receive affordable, accessible and quality health care in the future? Terrence Young -- Conservatives Our universally available and publicly-funded health care system is a priority for the Conservative Party. During the past two years, the Conservatives began implementing a 10-year, $41.3 billion Federal/Provincial Plan to Strengthen Health Care. In 2007 the Stephen Harper Conservatives invested, as promised, over $ 1 billion in funding to reduce patient wait times, and they are improving. With their share of these funds, the Ontario government Terence Young began implementing their plan, which started with reducing wait times for cataract surgery. It is important not just to increase funding, but also to increase the efficiency and productivity of the health care system. A re-elected Conservative government will continue to develop the Canada Health Infoway, to provide secure electronic health records. Importantly, we've also increased funding for new training spaces to address the shortage of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals. If elected, your health will be one of my top priorities. As Founding Chair of Drug Safety Canada I have advocated widely for the safe use of prescription drugs to reduce injuries and deaths due to adverse reactions. As MPP for north Oakville I was successful in getting $5.3 million for Oakville-Trafalgar Memorial Hospital's new Outpatient Department, a new kidney dialysis centre, and the money to build 470 new long term care beds in Oakville. If elected MP you can rely on my concerted efforts inside the government caucus for affordable, accessible quality health care in Oakville. Michelle Bilek -- NDP The NDP's Tommy Douglas created public Medicare in this country because everyone deserves quality health care. Canadians value and cherish our health care system and New Democrats have a comprehensive plan to secure and improve this vital program. New Democrats will: · Implement a plan to cut wait times · Train more doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners and midwives · Protect the system and stop pri- Michelle Bilek vatization. · Reaffirm public policies to ensure that women have the right to safe therapeutic abortion services. · Create a pan-Canadian home care program that will give 100,000 more Canadian families access to home care. · Establish a Canada-wide prescription drug program, phasing in drug coverage for all citizens, beginning with catastrophic drug costs. · Reduce the cost of prescription drugs for average Canadians and save billions of · Dollars from provincial health care budgets by implementing a bulk-purchasing plan · Make necessary drugs more affordable by implementing measures to replace high-cost patent drugs with lowercost generic drugs. And promote good health by: Blake Poland -- Green Party Health care is important to Canadians. Our single-payer, publicly-funded health care system is the envy of many, but there is room for improvement. Many Canadians do not have access to a regular family physician. Many forego dental care and suffer terribly as a result. Others cannot afford the cost of prescription medicines. Meanwhile, despite cuts, staff shortages and long wait times, health care costs continue to climb. Blake Poland And in many ways our health is getting worse. One in 5 children have asthma. Almost half of us face cancer sometime in our lives. The Green Party's approach to health is to couple smart investments in public health care with a stronger emphasis on prevention and health promotion. We recognize that health is about more than health care. For example, the OMA has estimated that 190 premature deaths and more than 2,000 emergency room visits in Halton region can be attributed to smog. Some things the Green Party would do: · reduce the out-of-pocket costs of treatment by establishing a Universal PharmaCare program for the bulk purchasing of drugs and working to bring back the successful generic drug market in Canada · invest in harm reduction, mental health services for See Michelle page 9 See Blake page 9 Bonnie Brown -- Liberals A Liberal government will enforce the spirit and letter of the Canada Health Act so patients can be confident they will receive the care they need, when they need it, regardless of ability to pay. To build confidence, we will work co-operatively with Provincial governments to sustain and improve health care. A Doctors and Nurses Fund will be established to end the shortage of health care professionals. This means better care and shorter wait times. The fund will improve training, Bonnie Brown remove bottlenecks to licensing and help foreign professionals obtain their Canadian credentials. When drug costs become too much for a family to bear, we should be there to help. A Liberal government will create a new $900million fund for catastrophic drug coverage to ease this burden. Health care costs demonstrate the need to put more resources into disease prevention and health promotion. A Liberal government will reinstate the Canadian Health Network where patients and professionals can find evidence based clinical guidelines, new research and best practices. We will also expand the Canadian Health Measures survey, to provide the data required to evaluate risk factors, because you can't fix what you can't measure. We will strengthen the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Personally I will work to put the CFIA under the Minister of Health instead of the Minister of Agriculture. 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