Thank you very much, Chairperson, and thank you to both witnesses for being here today.
You've given us an excellent overview of the bigger picture of what we're facing in this study on innovation. We've had some terrific examples of innovation that have taken place, but I think both of your presentations today have highlighted the need for us to get beyond the pilot project syndrome and to approach this in a much more national, pan-Canadian way.
In fact, Dr. Raza, I know one of your colleagues. Dr. Ryan Meili from Saskatchewan, wrote a terrific book about this. One of the things that I'd like to use from his book is he talks about the need to scale up at a national level all of this amazing work that goes on locally but often in a very isolated way.
I have a couple of questions.
First of all, on the accords, this is something that we in the NDP have been very interested in, because we've been very disappointed that there hasn't been a willingness from the federal government to show that they're committed to following through on the accords or what will happen when they run out in 2014. I agree with you that we do need to have a new set of health accords, and we do need to have funds that are targeted to improvements in the system. Even just following through on the commitments that were made would be a huge step, but we need to be doing much more than that.
When you talk about a new body to oversee innovation, do you also see that there could be some kind of fund targeted to that, that would be the carrot in terms of encouraging provinces to get on board?
The other question I have is, Dr. MacDonald, in the brief from the Public Health Association of B.C., I'm very impressed with how you focused on what appears to be the simple issue of transforming primary care, the six steps that you outline, and yet it appears so difficult to do it. We know what needs to be done, but it's not happening. In fact, I would say that in Ontario there's a much better system of community health centres than there is in B.C. In B.C. it's very, very patchy. I wonder what suggestion you have that could bring the federal government into that in terms of transforming primary care along the lines that you suggest and making it that kind of multidisciplinary approach that includes prevention, health promotion, focusing on populations that are at risk, and so on.
How can the federal government zero in on the primary care? If each of you would like to address those questions, I'd appreciate it.