Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you very much to the presenters for being here today. Certainly this is an issue of great importance to all of us and of great interest to us.
One thing I would like to return to and perhaps get some comments on from both Mr. Maxwell and Ms. Dodds is the transfers and the accountability and whether or not people have to be accountable for how they spend those transfers. This is the one thing I get the most comments on from residents, the fact that the federal government transfers all of these millions of dollars to the provinces but there is no accountability or no way to hold the provinces accountable for how they spend that money.
It may be determined that this money, when it leaves the federal coffers, is thought to be for a specific purpose, but it may not end up being used totally for that. I think this causes a great deal of concern to Canadians: the fact that we have a federal government, regardless of who that government may be, that is interested in health care and is contributing, and we've made the commitment that we're increasing the health transfers by 6%.... How can we assure people that those health transfers are going to go where they need to be going and that they're going to go where the federal government intends them to go? Is there a mechanism? It's my understanding that there is not a mechanism right now to do that, but is there something we can do once the accords are renewed, or once there is something else negotiated? Is there something we can put in those agreements that would allow for this?
Maybe, Mr. Maxwell, you could respond from your point of view, and Ms. Dodds or Ms. Bertrand, you could respond from yours.