Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, thank you to the guests who appeared at this committee.
Mr. Chairman, this is my first time participating on this committee, so I didn't have very much time to go through the response from the government. The first feeling I had after browsing through the report is that I share the feeling of my colleagues on the lack of response from the government in this report.
For example, just on the first recommendation, where the committee has recommended setting benchmarks in dealing with this problem, trying to reduce it from 8% to 6% by 2020, in the government's response they refuse to set any benchmark. That's not being responsible.
Also, if you look at the response to the first recommendation, they talk about the lack of experience in getting data and so on for this issue. Yet it's amazing, in the section on heavy weight they say the CCHS included a one-time survey and found that there is 26% obesity among children to age 17. But they won't do any assessment again until five years later, until 2012. If it's such a big problem we're facing, why wouldn't we do a survey sooner than five years? How come we're not monitoring this problem more closely?
The other problem I have is that I heard that the problem within the aboriginal community is twice as bad as in the general population.
My question is for the gentleman from Indian Affairs. I understand that the lead on this issue is Health Canada, but have you participated to exercise your duty? If the problem in the aboriginal community is twice as bad as in the general population, are you able to insist on or to get your fair share of the government's efforts to double the effort in the aboriginal community? Keep in mind that a lot of the natives won't be able to take advantage of some of the tax credits from the finance department because most of them don't pay federal tax.