I might begin and I'll answer in English.
I think it's interesting this juxtaposition that we have in the social determinants of health. You have food banks and you talk about health care. I hope members appreciate that the driving factors for unemployability are deeply tied to medical access, and the ability to have food security is deeply tied to the demands that happen on health care.
I believe these investments take us back to 2003 where, around that time, there was a health care shortage that was happening across the country. If you look at the analysis the Canadian Medical Association recently performed on the amounts of health transfers—which we'd love to submit—this is the largest nominal increase in supplementary investment since 2002-03. Those investments triggered refocus by federal, provincial and territorial bodies to make interventions in health care that changed the trajectory of things like primary care.
The wait time alliance came out in 2007. We had folks sitting around tables talking about how we actually improve primary care, how we improve access to patients' working environments for providers, and, as a result, things actually did get better. I was in the middle of residency training in 2008 as an anesthesiologist and I remember things actually getting a lot better as far as the accessibility of patients to surgical services is concerned. Why are we here now? It's because in 2014, the wait time alliance was quietly wound down and all the partners got up and started working in their silos again.
I think your question speaks to the requirement in this funding cycle to really focus on making sure that people around the table.... We have to have discussions that we're unwilling to have. We have to be very blunt about the crisis that's happening in our communities across the country. Patients in Quebec and other places in Canada, they deserve action. I do think that this can be a triggering event that leads to the same type of transformation. It looks and feels very similar to the last cycle that we just came out of.