Every Albertan should welcome this initiative with open arms, especially family physicians, emergency room physicians, and hospital administrators around the province, who are all overworked, over-stressed, and overdue for help. As a former resident of BC without a family doctor for two years, I would have been delighted. But sadly, the Alberta Medical Association has taken a very different approach despite calling for reforms from the government to alleviate the strains on hospitals and family medicine physicians.

As of next spring, I will have spent ten years in university or medical school training to get to this point - deciding what specialty to pursue as a physician. While family medicine should be a natural consideration, it's increasingly becoming the road less travelled for new graduates like me. The reasons are manifold, complex, and deeply rooted in the current state of Canada's healthcare system. Allow me to dissect why family medicine is losing its allure for the next generation of doctors.

NL has a golden opportunity to solve its surgical backlog problem because of the Premier's background as an accomplished surgeon. He is uniquely qualified to put NL at the forefront of fixing one of Canada’s healthcare system's most vexing problems, large and growing surgical backlogs. If someone as knowledgeable as Premier Furey cannot solve this problem then the rest of Canada’s premiers are in for a rough road in solving their own surgical backlog issues. Let's hope the financial resources are there to make this a seminal moment in NL's history.