It is hard to imagine that any Canadian would be unaware that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has five priorities.
They have been repeated so often over the past six months that many people can probably recite them from memory: (1) clean up government; (2) cut the GST; (3) crack down on crime; (4) offer a child-care plan; and (5) establish a patient wait-time guarantee. So far, Mr. Harper has been true to his word, methodically moving through the list. As a result, in just a few short months, notable progress has been made on four of the five priorities.
The Accountability Act is already making its way through the legislative process. The budget, which contained the GST change and the new child-care funding, passed quickly. The government also introduced a series of bills to amend the justice system. You can question the Harper government's agenda, but it is difficult to question its commitment to it.
Recently, however, the Prime Minister penned an opinion piece in Report Magazine in which he omitted any mention of a patient wait-time guarantee, substituting it, instead, with "strengthening our country at home and around the world." To many, this signalled that the government planned to quietly drop one of its priorities. Given the importance Mr. Harper places on keeping his promises, I cannot believe he will ever back down on a priority, especially one as critical as a patient wait-time guarantee — the priority that Canadians overwhelmingly identified in a recent poll as being the most important of the five.
Naturally, as the national voice of Canada's physicians and the millions of Canadians they care for, the Canadian Medical Association has long been concerned by the wait- time issue. Every day, doctors and our fellow health professionals witness first-hand the pain and frustration that our patients face as a result of lengthy waiting times for care.
That is why the CMA has partnered with our colleagues in the Wait Time Alliance to lead the movement to address wait times as a crucial step toward ensuring access to quality medical care. In recent years, physicians have been responsible for ground-breaking research to establish science-based, medically acceptable benchmarks for care.
The result? When the Wait Time Alliance's final report was released last August, it outlined maximum allowable waiting times for cancer, heart, diagnostic imaging, joint replacement and sight restoration. It also gave governments a set of tools on a silver platter to reduce wait times in their own priority areas.
Without one of those tools — a publicly funded safety valve — the wait-times guarantee is effectively meaningless. The safety valve can be done today through the CMA's proposed Canada Health Access Fund, a tax-financed fund that would ensure patients can get the care they need if wait times are exceeded.
This fund could be created by bringing forward, on a one-time basis, the remaining $1-billion of the $5.5-billion in federal wait-time money pledged to the provinces in the 2004 health accord.
The money is there. The question is whether both the federal and provincial governments will put the needs of patients first. This point was made clear in the final report by the federal adviser on wait times, Brian Postl. This, and other good work, must not sit on the shelf and gather dust.
It is important to remember that it is not just federal foot-dragging that threatens one of the Prime Minister's key election promises. The provincial and territorial governments must also step up to the plate. They, too, must commit to a patient wait-time guarantee, and this is precisely the type of discussion that should be taking place at the Council of the Federation in St. John's: How can we work together to realize a pan-Canadian wait-time guarantee to ensure Canadian patients can get timely access to medical care?
Mr. Harper can still honour his commitment on wait times. As he himself said in April: "Our immediate agenda has five priorities. Not fifteen. Not fifty. Five. We know what we want to do. And we have a plan and a focus to get it done. ... We will work with the provinces to establish a Patient Wait Times Guarantee — giving Canadians the health care they need, when they need it."
That is clear enough for me.
Ruth Collins-Nakai is president of the Canadian Medical Association.
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