We've always talked about how public health is a local activity. There's a provincial mandate and there are federal roles that we play to support and build that capacity. In the first full year of the agency, we had 1,800 staff and a budget of $423 million. Now, in these estimates, there is a staff of 2,400-plus and $648 million. That is applied to the work of public health in the country.
Is public health there yet? No. The neglect of the nineties clearly is a problem that was recognized in SARS. We are continuing to build that, not just federally, but also provincially, territorially, and locally. Is the system there yet? Of course not. It needs to continue to develop. But there's also an absorptive capacity in terms of how, if we hired 50 public health doctors tomorrow, that's 50 less to actually serve public health at the local level in this country. We need to continue to work on the training, the skills, the development, tools, etc., that support the whole system. That's where we focused our efforts.
So we're not reducing funding for public health in that sense.