Thank you all for coming.
In some ways we've been operating in the dark as a committee in that we don't really know the strategy, so we're pleased to have the federal co-chair and the provincial co-chair.
I think what we're struggling with is that any strategy should include what, by when, and how. I think we've heard bits and pieces, but I wonder if you would outline what the strategy is in terms of what your targets are, how we get there, how we are going to do this thing in terms of having enough health professionals to do the job, both paid and unpaid, and in terms of the aging demographic. Tell me a little bit more.
We would love it if you would table with the committee anything you have from 2004, when human health resources was a very important part of the accord. How far have you come, where are you going, and what are the provinces and the federal government doing? Could you just lay it out for us?
I think the reason we invited Statistics Canada was that the cost recovery approach seems to be getting in the way of communities being able to plan. We're pleased that the health statistics division and the community health survey are here, but I think we know that the determinants of health--poverty, violence, the environment, shelter, equity, education--are also hugely important for communities to be able to plan. How do communities get the data they need in order to properly plan in terms of the future of health human resources needed for that community, not only on the demographics side, but on the determinants and in terms of the broadest possible definition of health?
Particularly, Josh, I think what we talked about on Tuesday was that in lots of countries statisticians and epidemiologists at the service of individual communities, clinics, or whatever, become very important. If you measure, it gets noticed, and if it gets noticed, it gets done. On the day after Florence Nightingale's birthday we could get to how we incorporate these kinds of epidemiologists and statisticians right on the ground, rather than having somebody do it off the side of their desk.