Thank you very much for the question. We appreciate the kind remarks.
Across the country, community health centres are a patchwork. Unfortunately, both at the federal level and the provincial level, there simply hasn't been a commitment to shifting the emphasis of primary health care towards an integrated approach whereby health professionals—physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, dieticians, and others—are brought out of their silos into the team setting. So political will in advancing a team-based approach and implementing the mechanism so that collaboration can take place, in partnership with medical associations, nursing associations, and others, is a key step.
I think as well that part of the dilemma faced by provincial governments as one of the key stakeholders in advancing these health solutions that have been promoted for some time--including just this past week by the Honourable Roy Romanow, who recommended community health centres as a key solution to some of our current challenges within the publicly funded health system--is that they often do require bricks and mortar. They do require some form of investment, whether it's retrofitting existing buildings or construction of new buildings. This is something where we see a particularly important role for federal partners. For example, stimulus funding or other projects announced by the government could in fact be put in the service of expanding health solutions, like the community health centre model. That's one example of a federal role--
