Thank you, Madam Chair.
As you know, there's renewal in the supplementaries for aboriginal health programs. We know that aboriginal people in Canada face a number of significant health challenges. The budget in 2010 renews funding that is important to aboriginal health programs in areas of diabetes, suicide prevention, maternal and child health, health human resources, and the aboriginal health transition fund. The programs were set to expire, and I'm proud to say that our government has provided an additional $285 million over two years to renew these important initiatives across the country.
The renewed funding provided in 2010 will continue to address the high rates of chronic disease among aboriginal people. As an example, in an area such as diabetes it will allow us to continue to provide prevention programming for over 600 first nations and Inuit communities across the country, and also in areas on which questions were raised earlier, on maternal and child health services, healthy pregnancy initiatives, and suicide prevention programs. These are all important areas that we hear time and time again are important to aboriginal first nations people across the country. I'm very pleased that our government was able to continue supporting those important initiatives.
Thank you.