Thank you for inviting us to the committee.
You touched on the very essence of our CIHI mandate, which is to provide a mechanism enabling the various provincial governments to compare themselves with each other. The CIHI mandate is to work in cooperation with the provinces. To do this, we have a bilateral agreement that governs our relationship with each provincial government.
You asked us how we make sure that the information gets to the provincial governments. The institute is not necessarily invited to the National Assembly or to the legislative assemblies, but it does ensure that every Ministry of Health, or, for instance, the Institut national de santé publique du Québec, receives information produced by CIHI and can use it in its political system in order to further its causes.
The objective is to produce data enabling us to note the differences between the systems, and not to say that one system is better than the other. Each system may prove to be better or worse than another one when it comes to certain issues. We want to enable people who develop provincial or local health policies, whether it be at the CLSC level or within a regional district, to have access to this information.