Health care is a shared responsibility. As a health critic, I'm sure you're aware of that. It is a shared responsibility with provincial and territorial governments, and our view, which is the view consistent with many other federal governments and many other stripes, is that the responsibility is not only with the federal government, particularly because as a former provincial health minister I know this, that a lot of the levers to actually effect the change are held by provincial and territorial governments rather than directly by the federal government. The provincial and territorial governments, as I'm sure you're aware, are the ones that have the relationship with the hospitals and the relationship with physicians, for example.
I'm aware of that. That does not mean that at the federal level you cannot have an influence over the future direction of health care in this country. I believe we are showing the leadership by announcing in areas that we can that we are willing to move ahead. Certainly when it comes to the budget of my department, when you look at Infoway, when you look at CIHR, when you look at our investments in health human resources, they are all directed to helping us achieve wait time guarantees and reductions in wait times for patients.
That really is job number one in terms of how I see our department and its resources. I can certainly assure this committee of that.