Thank you. I'll defer to my experts to go over the sometimes complex issues of the funding.
Let me just say for the record to the honourable member that this is a key interest of mine as health minister. It's an area where Health Canada does directly interact with citizens in Canada, with patients. Certainly, based on my consultations to date with many native chiefs and leaders in the first nations and Inuit communities, there is more work to be done. Indeed, I think there is a general consensus that the health outcomes in native communities, and amongst natives wherever they live in our country, are of concern. When you have, generally speaking, five to six times the suicide rates and two to three times the type 2 diabetes in those communities as compared with Canada as a whole, that signifies that what has existed in the past has not been successful on the health outcomes front.
I have engaged with first nations communities to ask them for their assistance, their advice, their guidance on how best to obtain better health outcomes for first nations, for aboriginal communities throughout the country. I really see that as one of the first orders of responsibility of my department. Of course, I will be working with Jim Prentice, the Indian Affairs minister, and many other players.
Before I get to the cold hard numbers, I can tell you that are some successes. I don't want this to be completely a story of failure. A number of individual programs are working quite well in various first nations communities. I'm reminded of a telehealth service in Ontario that connects about a dozen first nation communities with doctors, nurses, and hospitals. That has reduced wait times and given front line advice to sick aboriginal Canadians who need that advice quicker. A project in Nova Scotia that has focused on primary care and the access to primary care has reduced the wait time for primary care by, I think, 40%.
So there are some successes out there. What we have to do, obviously, is build on those successes and apply them sensitively to local traditions and surroundings, but I think there is something there that we can build on.
With that, just on the numbers, maybe I can turn it over to Madam Gosselin.