It didn't look like it.
I wanted to thank you for the excellent conference that you held last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in Edmonton with the Native Women's Association. I think that it is the role of the federal government to be trying to get more aboriginal physicians, and to see those 100 young women from across the country willing to be persuaded to be health professionals was truly admirable. I thank you for your support of that conference.
To begin, I am surprised and astounded that one of the few increases in your estimates was for your motor car allowance. I just want to know why on earth you would leave that red flag there of a $1,000 increase in your motor car allowance when the rest of the country is putting up with compressions and reductions. It just seems ridiculous that you would allow that to stand as the estimates went to Treasury Board, on page 13-2. I just will put you on notice that it may be necessary for this committee to reduce that travel allowance by the $1,000 at the end of this meeting, which you won't be here for, it sounds like.
In terms of top of mind, we are extraordinarily concerned about what is happening with tuberculosis in Canada. I'm having trouble finding out where the commitment is to reduce this unacceptable difference between non-aboriginal and aboriginal people in terms of it being 31 times higher in aboriginal people and 186 times higher in Inuit people. I don't see where that's reflected in the budget other than in reducing contributions for first nations and Inuit community programs: $70 million out of there, $50 million out of contributions for first nations and Inuit primary health care. How does the minister reconcile that?
And in this draft program for TB, the Canadian tuberculosis prevention and control strategy, your draft for winter of 2009, I want to know why first nations and Inuit health branch gets $4,134,000 while CIC is getting $7,397,000 in terms of immigration when it's very clear from the data that foreign-acquired TB is not a contagion risk. In fact, it says in your plan, “Very little TB in the foreign born is acquired in Canada. Most disease in these populations is acquired abroad....”
So why is almost twice the money for TB going to Citizenship and Immigration than to your department?