There are 165,000 people in Ottawa, Speaker, who do not have a family doctor or a primary health care provider, and I hear on a weekly basis from these patients who are desperate, who are frustrated and, in some cases, scared. These are people who have nowhere to go for basic, routine health care, who have no one to ask the question to when they find a lump or something disturbing, who have nowhere to go just to get a prescription renewed.

Our emergency rooms in Ottawa are packed, and yet this government is cutting funding to the Queensway Carleton Hospital for emergency care so that, come April, there will be 10 fewer physician hours in the ER every single day. People do not want to go to the Queensway Carleton for basic health care, but they are desperate. So desperate that when the South Keys Health Center opened up and told people they could have health care for $400 a day, plus $75 for each visit, there were 2,000 people on the wait-list for this care. Appletree is able to charge $110 for a pap test and then another $110 to get the results of that pap test. ReVive health care in Kanata is charging $600 for primary health care, and there are people in Ottawa who are so desperate for care that they are willing to pay these prices.

This is the government that said nobody would have to pay with their credit card, and yet here are people in Ottawa having to pay with their credit card for the most basic of health care.

Then, last week, we learned that there are some incredibly unsavory operators operating in this field, where there is no health regulation and people have no idea who is providing this care that they are paying for.

The government could address this crisis today, stop the exploitation, stop putting people at risk, if they adopted the NDP motion, which would provide an additional 19 hours a week of administrative support for doctors and provide primary care for two million people, which would include the 165,000 people in Ottawa.

I urge the members on the government side to vote today to put a stop to this exploitation and provide people with the primary care that they deserve.