Federal Health minister takes heat over scaled-back plan to add doctors

[tuvor]

Wait times will continue to be a big problem with the federal government backtracking on an election promise to produce thousands of more doctors, says the president of the Medical Society of P.E.I.

Dr. Herb Dickieson, a family doctor in O’Leary, said he was dismayed to hear Canada’s Health Minister Tony Clement promise the addition of only 1,000 doctors over the next five years.

Dickieson said that Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised during his successful federal election campaign to produce 3,000 more doctors.

He said getting 3,000 new doctors in Canada would now take 15 years based on Clement’s announcement Monday in Charlottetown.

http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/index.cfm?sid=3662&sc=2