Thank you very much.
It's an excellent question you've just asked all of us to consider answering, because we are commonly asked the question, “Why don't you just go to the provinces and have the provinces solve those issues?” But we have a perfect example through the primary health care transition fund, where a federal amount of money led to innovative, excellent programs that were distributed provincially and have produced excellent results about collaboration, for example.
Also, we have the example about enhancing the interprofessional or interdisciplinary education initiative. That was a federal initiative that has transcended to provinces. For example, at the University of Toronto they have embarked on a major initiative for interprofessional education. Effective September 2009, every health science student across 10 faculties will have to have 20 credits in interprofessional education to graduate. This was a federal initiative that is actually going to have a local effect.
We've seen the benefits of that. We're engaged actively in these IPE projects. In fact, the team I lead at St. Michael's Hospital, where I actually chair our working group on interprofessional education for our department, has won two awards from the University of Toronto on these initiatives in the last year.
So yes, I think there is a very strong role for you to play in actually guiding provinces to look at issues more broadly that transcend local jurisdictions.
Thank you.