Thank you for your question.
I think it's very clear that we have to deal with health care in partnership with provinces and jurisdictions. Our government is committed to continuing to provide financial support to provinces and territories for the delivery of health care under the Canada Health Act. In the last few years we've been transferring funding, and increasingly transferring funding to the provinces and jurisdictions to allow them to deliver health care.
This year's budget, which we transferred on April 1, was $24 billion. Next year that will grow by 6%. It's up to each province and territory in terms of how they allocate that funding to meet their needs. Our role is to ensure that we support the Canada Health Act and provide the financial support to provinces as agreed to.
In addition to that, the federal government has a role in the delivery of health care to first nations--Health Canada does. My job here is to ensure that we continue to try to address the health indicators in this country for first nations people. That's one of the increases in the budget. If you look at the population health of first nations people, as opposed to the rest of Canada, there's a huge gap. We need to start addressing that. It is equally important to address the delivery of health care in provinces and jurisdictions. The funding we have provided here will support this and try to address some of those health disparities.
The other part I'd like to talk about is this. We do a lot of work in this country in partnership with provinces and territories, whether it be in the area of mental heath, whether it be in the area of health human resources--we've been working with provinces on that--whether it be in addressing patient wait-times, whether it be the issue around developing the pandemic plan—we never had a pandemic plan in this country until 2006—or whether it be the investments and partnerships of provinces to address a national plan. We'll continue to work with provinces on that, but we need to also respect that provinces and territories deliver front-line health care and we provide the funding. There's that relationship that we continue to build on as a federal government.
Thank you.