Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all our witnesses for being here. We hope that you and your loved ones are safe and healthy during this pandemic. It's very good of you to give testimony today that will hopefully form some of what we should see in a spring budget.
I'd like to start with you, Mr. Villeneuve. First, our thanks go to all the front-line workers and nurses across the country who have shown such courage during this pandemic.
I have three questions.
What you're calling for is an investment, the demographic top-up transfer, that is slightly less than the cutbacks we've seen over the last five years. I'm wondering whether that demographic top-up is in addition to restoring the full health care funding that was slashed by the former Harper government and continued by the current government. We've seen the impacts of that.
My second question is around long-term care. What do you think is needed? Should long-term care really come under the Canada Health Act as part of ensuring that there is publicly administered long-term care and long-term-care standards across the country to avoid the nightmare that we have seen repeated numerous times, often in private long-term care homes, over the course of the last few months?
The third is on the issue of pharmacare. We have Bill C-213 before the House of Commons, the Canada pharmacare act. MPs will be voting on it in February. It would provide the legal framework for universal, publicly administered access to medication. To what extent do you think, and do Canada's nurses think, it would be a good idea to have universal pharmacare to add to and strengthen our health care system?
Those are my three questions to start. Thank you.