Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank everybody for coming. I'm going to echo that there are four very powerful women sitting here on a panel. That's great.
The idea of these multidisciplinary teams that we've been talking about is not a new thing. In fact, money was put into the health accord, in 2004, and was agreed on by the federal government and premiers of every province. It was to pull together that federal leadership role, etc., in the change and reform of primary care practice, looking at the team, at how it links to an acute care setting—as Libby was asking you—and how, if you work for the hospital, you will know how to take people as soon as they are ready to leave and move them into a new system.
I want to ask what happened to that. That is the first question. Why did that stall in about 2007 and nothing has happened since? The federal government put money on the table for that to happen.
The second thing is that I have noted that some provinces did a little bit of it, and there are excellent examples out there. Calgary has a great clinic. Ontario has been doing a lot of good work. I think Nova Scotia has been doing some good work on this. However, they lack the ability to move any further.
With regard to the concept of scope of practice, whenever I travel across the country and I meet with ministers of health—and it really doesn't matter what their political stripe is—they all say the same thing. They say there are three areas that we, as a Council of the Federation, cannot move on alone. One is health human resources, of course the other is pharmaceuticals, and the third one is primary care reform.
The bottom line is that since the Council of the Federation has admitted that they can't take the steps they need, I wonder if you have a plan for ensuring we get that right mix of people, and that the mix doesn't only include health care professionals but housing advocates, social workers, and even school counsellors, to link into that team?
In the absence of the federal government at the table, what are your plans to try to move this agenda forward? If we don't, we will not have efficient, effective, and timely care, and we will be wasting a lot of money on acute care beds. What are you planning to do on that?
First, what happened to the plan in 2004 for primary care reform and health human resources?