Liberal leader Robert Ghiz used his opening news conference on Wednesday to outline the party policy on health care. He says it is the number one issue of the campaign.

The Liberal's 27 candidates were in attendance for the leader's first policy statement.

Ghiz pledged to bring the ratio of patients to doctors down, and told the crowd the Binns government hasn't been able to bring enough new family doctors to the Island.

"It just mystified me how the minister of health could actually last week stand up and say how things were so great in our health care system, and so great! "Our health care system needs a lot of work, it's not time to slow down it's time to speed things up."

Ghiz says Liberal government would renovate part of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown to create a dialysis and diabetes centre.

He's also pledging an overhaul of emergency services, increases in staff, efforts to reduce waiting times for patients, and fewer temporary closures at hospitals.

Ghiz, who worked for Prime Minister Chretien before taking over the party, says he would badger his old boss until the federal government provided more money to spend on health services.

"I'm going to go up and if they're going to be money committed to health care, and there's going to be strings attached to it, I'm going to say if it's money that can help the health care of Islanders we're going to take that money.

Ghiz then headed out to continue with his health care theme, spending the afternoon campaigning with the Liberal candidate running in the riding currently held by Health Minister Jamie Ballem.