Thank you.
I'd just point out that, yes, our government had to make some cuts in the nineties because we inherited this $42 billion Conservative deficit and we were in a state of crisis. But having balanced the books, don't forget it was the Liberal government that initiated the 10-year health accord, where funds would grow at 6% per year for 10 years from 2004 to 2014.
Let me move to a different subject, which is the topic of funding for first nations and Inuit health care. I have two concerns. If one looks at the estimates on pages 163 and 164, in the current year we're getting less information than we did in the previous year. Under first nations and Inuit health care, for 2010-11 there were 10 categories of spending that were revealed in the estimates. In the more recent years, 2011-12, there are only three categories. So you've amalgamated a whole bunch of smaller amounts into a much smaller number of categories, thereby providing less information.
I have two questions. One, why do you think it's appropriate to give so much less information to Canadians and to this committee? Second, I note that the total expenditures are very similar for each of the two years, whereas the Assembly of First Nations has estimated a nearly 10% increase in the number of first nations people eligible for non-insured health benefits. So you have expenditures that are nearly flat, and the demand or need in terms of population growth is rising very quickly.
I guess I have two questions. Why collapse the information, and why are expenditures not nearly keeping pace with the population growth of aboriginal and Inuit people?