Thank you.
We've had some good testimony. Thank you for appearing today and presenting your views. I suppose it's left me looking for some answers on where to go next, or where the federal focus ought to be. As an aside, and almost as a joke, I would have to kind of boil down a lot of the testimonies today and elsewhere: I've concluded that if we live long enough, something is going to kill us. By that I mean it seems that, as a country, we've done a relatively good job of curing diseases, and now we're struggling with extending lives and lifestyles in a way that people are happy, or enjoy life to the fullest.
I suppose there's a question I kind of want to drill down on, and I'd be curious to get your answer on. It was touched on by a couple of people, and I'm not sure if it's what you meant when you talked about cure versus disease prevention, and shifting the focus from one to the other. But I can't believe that you would be suggesting that governments or doctors remove the emphasis from curing disease, removing resources, to focus on disease prevention. If you're not, then what would your message be to the federal government, which has under the 2004 health accord increased spending by 6%, and then going forward, at least for two years, increased it by another 6%? Are you suggesting that the federal government mandate to provinces a third of that 6% to disease prevention, or are you suggesting that 6% isn't enough and that more needs to be done? How would you balance that off with other priorities that governments have to face, including managing tax dollars at the end of the day?