Thank you. Madam Chair, members, I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to be here with you this afternoon.
I am here to talk about two important aspects of the Auditor General's report—federal funding and reporting, as related to health care.
The federal government has demonstrated its commitment to health care by increasing transfers to provinces and territories, including growing support for health.
I'd like to set the context for my remarks by noting that we've had a long and productive relationship with the Auditor General. We invited the Office of the Auditor General to audit the first release of Healthy Canadians in 2002, and then again in 2004 and in 2006. In 2008 the Office of the Auditor General decided a more overarching review of health information reporting would be useful. We're pleased that the Auditor General has undertaken this task and has provided to us the very useful feedback that they did in their report.
To clarify, Healthy Canadians is a federal report to all Canadians, on comparable health indicators at a national level.
Each province and territory is committed, in the health accords, to releasing a separate indicator report covering their own jurisdiction, to their own citizens.
The Auditor General has indicated that Health Canada has met the specific health indicator reporting obligations of the accords. However, it noted there are ways that Healthy Canadians can be improved, and we've taken time to rethink some of those improvements for its next release. In Healthy Canadians 2008, to be released next month, we've taken the Auditor General's recommendations to heart and have made some significant improvements. We have expanded the report's scope by adding 19 new indicators drawn from a list of 70 comparable indicators approved by federal, provincial, and territorial health ministers. This brings the total number of indicators in Healthy Canadians to 37.
For example, on access we've added the proportion of the population that reports having a regular family doctor. We've added wait times for surgery and specialists.
On quality we have added, for example, mortality rate for stroke; mortality rate and readmission rate for acute myocardial infarction.
On health status and wellness, we've added, for example, life expectancy; infant mortality; low birth weight; and mortality and incidence rates for lung, prostate, breast, and colorectal cancer. We've also added more in-depth interpretation of the data by clearly relating it to accord commitments.
We will have a more proactive communications approach with a media release, posting on the Health Canada website, notification of health professionals, and highlighting of the report in announcements and speeches. For Healthy Canadians 2010 and beyond, we will be providing more data on first nations and Inuit health from the Aboriginal Peoples Survey. We're also working with other federal departments to determine how health data can be collected and reported for federal population groups, including the military and RCMP staff, veterans, refugees and some immigrants, and federal prisoners.
Our minister is very interested in the health status and well-being of Canadians. She is well aware of the indicators and statistics surrounding life expectancy, infant mortality and the prevalence of diabetes in the population. She is very supportive of improvements in reporting on health and the health care system.
So reporting to Canadians is, and will be, very important, and we'll do our utmost to go further in comparable indicator reporting.
We're here to answer any questions you may have. We look forward to profiting from the Auditor General's observations and the discussion this afternoon.