Thank you very much.
Thanks to our officials. To the new faces who've just joined us at the table, welcome. We appreciate your being here today.
One of the issues that's top of mind for everybody in health care right now—and I didn't get a chance to address this to the minister—is of course the subject of innovation. Actually, everybody seems to have an opinion on where we're going with innovation. We have an advisory panel to which the minister has appointed some very capable Canadians. About eight distinguished Canadians are joining Dr. Naylor on the panel.
But Dr. Chris Simpson from the CMA spoke here in Ottawa just a couple of days ago on a national strategy for seniors. The minister mentioned in her remarks the challenges facing us with chronic diseases and managing those. Dr. Simpson's remarks had to do with the contribution of chronic illnesses to occupying hospital beds, creating gridlock in the hospitals, and tying up whole facilities because there's no place to move people. The Hill Times has about 20 pages of opinions on how to get through some health care innovation.
By way of background, I'll just say that in my own province, I think we're at about 45% of the provincial budget. Most of them are at 45% or 46% right now of their entire provincial budget. But going back to 2000, when I first ran for office, in my province, when you added education and social services, you were at 85% of the entire provincial budget on those three alone.
So we know that health care, as we've been practising it, is not sustainable. Dr. Simpson's take is that we have to dehospitalize health care. We're hoping that the panel, as they hear lots of opinions from across the country, will come up with some useful suggestions. The minister mentioned briefly in her opening remarks that Dr. Naylor's committee has hit the ground running, that they're doing consultations.
The minister is not here now to answer this question, so Mr. Glover, Mr. Da Pont, or whoever wants to address this, can you please give us a review of where Dr. Naylor's committee is at, how this is playing out, and how those consultations are taking place?