Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'm very happy to speak to this important issue. I think there are two issues: one is the amount of money, and the second is how it's displayed and shown in the estimates.
I'll start with the first question on the amount of money. The biggest change you will see in the estimates is because of the non-insured health benefits. They are supplementary benefits that we offer through Health Canada to first nations individuals. The largest components of that are for prescription and non-prescription drugs, and medical transportation for dental and optometric support, for example.
As the member notes, these are demand-driven programs, so as the population increases you will expect to see an increase in the amount. In fact, every year or two, depending, we look at the demand and the estimates and come up with a final estimate as to what we think the actual draw on the program will be. We're in the process of that as well. We typically get a base budget, and then we get money in the supplementary estimates that reflects the actual demand. But there's no change in the benefit levels for those programs for 2011-12. We expect to see--perhaps before this committee--the supplementary amounts in the supplementary estimates that will come in the fall.
The second part of the question was about the categories. I recognize that in these estimates there are changes that go in a couple of directions. The first one I will point the members to is on page 162. You can see that we previously portrayed the first nations and Inuit health programs--if you look at 2010-11--as $2.2 billion. They were portrayed there as one number. In a sense, this year, if we look again to page 161, we're showing that amount in three categories for 2011-12 . So there is the supplementary health benefits category that I mentioned--the sort of insurance program that is demand driven; primary health care--the second one--that tends to be our services for everything from public health immunization programs to emergency nursing services in remote communities; and then there's infrastructure support, which is support for the actual running of the services.
Rather than just showing the $2.2 billion, we have tried to give parliamentarians a better sense there by showing it in these three components. But as the member noted, on page 164 we're showing the transfer payments in these three big categories, because we think that better reflects the three particular program lines. But as the minister noted, we are taking the authorities down from what used to be 10 different authorities that ran these programs to three. That is very much in keeping with our desire to not essentially hamstring first nations communities in delivering the programs, because when we say it's precisely under this authority, we sometimes limit their ability to move the money where it's needed.
We are basically saying that if something is under the authority of primary care services, they have some ability, within all of the accountability frameworks we have in place, to move that money within that envelope. So we are reducing the authorities in that way.
