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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 300

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 16, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 300 - Apr/16/24
Mr. Jamil Jivani
  • Apr/16/24 1:47:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when I was a cancer patient at North York General Hospital and Sunnybrook hospital, I saw many people in very dire health circumstances, people facing all sorts of challenges, some of with whom I shared a cancer ward. What was very clear to me was that we needed programs that could help people who did not have the money to purchase the drugs they needed. The cancer ward at North York General Hospital has a provincial program to help people with drugs. What I continue to be confused about, as I hear this debate on pharmacare, is why there is not a greater recognition of the need to work with the provinces to solve some of these problems. I saw people right beside me, hooked up to the same IVs as I was, getting their body pumped with chemotherapy drugs. They depended on those provincial programs to get the health care they needed. What I worry about, and I think what my fellow cancer patients at North York General Hospital would worry as well, including cancer patients all across the country, is whether this is a matter of creating more bureaucracy in Ottawa or whether we are actually concerned about providing people with what they need at an affordable price.
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