Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I want to thank the minister for coming to answer questions today, and to discuss the supplementary estimates.
I want to go straight to something that my colleague, Libby Davies, from the NDP talked about. I see that one of the major points made by the minister is that maintaining a healthy weight and a healthy diet, as well as doing regular exercise, will ensure the numbers of health-related issues in this country, including chronic diseases, go down.
The minister then went on to discuss the importance to the health care system of decreasing chronic disease and managing chronic disease well. The minister also spoke about signing a health promotion and disease prevention initiative and focusing on that.
I know, as the minister said, that there are more than 10 ways to skin a cat. But the only really important way to skin the cat is the one in which evidence has proven is the most effective way to skin the cat. We know that the most effective way to get healthy weights in this country and to bring down chronic diseases, such as diabetes caused by obesity, chronic heart disease, is to look at three very important issues: salt, trans fats, and sugar.
The minister absolutely has in her power the ability to mandate those amounts. Her own department has told her so. Advisory committees have told her so. All of the health care providers she's met with have told her so.
I'd like to know why the minister doesn't follow evidence-based decision-making in her department. It would seem to me that all of this is just a lot of talk, which we have been hearing since 2006, and nothing has been done to deal with this most significant issue.
I would like to know why the minister has in her power the ability to do this and has done absolutely nothing about it.
There is a second thing I want to ask the minister. She talks about money being spent on HIV/AIDS for a vaccine. This is good. This is very good. But is the minister aware of the fact that in British Columbia there is a proven, again evidence-based, drug that will not only treat the patient who has HIV, but by the second dose will bring down the viral load so completely that HIV will be prevented from then on. If I could not think of a better way to look at something in place of a vaccine while we're waiting for a vaccine, that's the way to do it.
I would hope that the minister would work with provinces to talk about a way of ensuring that this is part of a major HIV/AIDS strategy. It's called the HAART program. British Columbia is spending $18 million a year to treat every single person who is HIV-positive. This is a smart, evidence-based way of doing things.
So that's the second thing I want to ask the minister about.
There is a third thing I want to ask the minister. She talks very much about the crown and first nations model of health governance. Since the money for the aboriginal healing fund was transferred from the aboriginal communities into Health Canada, can the minister give me an update on how that aboriginal healing fund has progressed within Health Canada? How much of that has gone to actual aboriginal communities to work on healing, to make a difference?
In fact, INAC originally told us it was so effective they hoped this fund would continue within aboriginal communities. Health Canada should give evidence to me about the outcomes that are better than the aboriginal healing fund outcomes.
Finally, on personal health, the minister talked about a genetic profile and that you cannot pick different things to solve a problem. Well, does the minister believe that genetic profiles are the only things that cause disease? What about poverty and unemployment? What about the environment? What about smoking? What about obesity? What about alcohol? Those are things that also create disease, not merely your genetic profile.
If the minister has that kind of money to spend, I would like to know why the minister isn't dealing with bringing down chronic diseases.