At the time we did the report, we travelled to northern Manitoba and northern Ontario, and there are non-indigenous communities that are not that far from the indigenous communities. The objective of the program is to provide comparable services in a similar geographical area. That's the key phrase.
We asked how they knew whether they were doing this. At the time what we reported was that they didn't have the data, and they didn't have the information to know whether or not they were, in fact, meeting that objective. As you said, they committed to doing that. I'm sad to hear they haven't done it.
Definitely it's an issue we raised back in 2015. It's doable, because there is information there. Of course, that would mean working with indigenous people and the provinces to get that information, and that's what we recommended. The key is to make sure they work together, so they would have information as to whether or not they are trying to do that, because that is the program objective. It's not only for this program but also for many other programs for indigenous communities.
I would say something else, though, about the access issue in the remote communities. Again, we talked about the needs. We asked whether the indigenous people knew what services they could expect from those nursing stations. It wasn't until the end of the audit that the department had actually put together what services people could expect to receive when they visited a nursing station, so that was good progress. The problem was that the department didn't know whether each of those nursing stations had the capacity to deliver on those services. That was the outstanding piece of work. That's still an open question.