Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you for the question.
The value of indicators and information is critical.
Those things are very important if we want to have an idea of the progress made since the 2004 accord.
Tremendous importance has been placed on data. Both the Canadian Institute for Health Information and the Health Council of Canada put out information from time to time about progress that's been made on the accord, and about progress in the health system generally.
It was mentioned by the honourable member that we have made considerable progress in some focused areas, for example, wait times. I think the data is much better than it was. It was a big focus area under the accord. It's very difficult and it has been very difficult to get comparable data. But the last report from CIHI commented on the fact that we are now getting much more comparable data, and we can actually see the progress that's been made.
Health human resources was mentioned by the honourable member. Again, CIHI most recently put out—and regularly puts out—the progress we're making on numbers of physicians, for example, and the nursing workforce. We've expanded the number of health professions that we are tracking to other critical professions, such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and pharmacists, for example. So we are continuing to expand the role of information that we have.
We have data on some areas of the accord, for example, home care. We have some information about how much home care is available across the country, but it's not an area where, at the moment, we have comparable indicators.
Individual jurisdictions, as was mentioned, report to their citizens. I would say that, relative to the past, we have much better data, but it continues to be an area where we would like to do better. As the minister mentioned, it's one of the reasons accountability is a discussion for this week's meeting, but it will be a discussion on an ongoing basis.
As I talk to my colleagues across the country, there's certainly an understanding that we need to have more data and better data. I would like to say I think we're making significant progress, but we would certainly want to continue that progress and have increasingly better data to manage and to measure, and be transparent to Canadians about the system.