Health Committee on April 21st, 2026

[Elizabeth Toller]

The goal is to have Canada‑wide standards. The industry doesn't want to be held to provincial standards. It wants a set of Canada‑wide and international standards.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Who makes decisions for taxpayers, the industry or the governments?

[Jocelyne Voisin]

The federal government isn't developing the standards. Experts are developing them.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

So why is the federal government implementing them?

[Jocelyne Voisin]

We aren't implementing them.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Are you coordinating them?

[Elizabeth Toller]

We're relying on Canada Health Infoway and the Canadian Institute for Health Information. These organizations are responsible for developing the standards.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you. The time is up.

I'm going to move to Mr. Strauss for five minutes.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Madam Chair, would it be possible to obtain a written response?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes, we will request them from the department. They'll come to the clerk, and you'll get them.

Thank you.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Ms. Voisin, you mentioned, in responding to one of my colleagues, that an analysis was done, uptake was found not to be good enough and a stewardship decision was made. May we see the analysis? Can it be tabled with the committee?

[Jocelyne Voisin]

Yes, I already offered to table the analysis.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Fantastic. Thank you.

You talked about pivoting. We have this PrescribeIT system. The government is now pivoting to an open standards system. How much money is going into the open standards system?

[Elizabeth Toller]

We will be providing $50 million to Infoway to carry out its core mandate, which is to drive adoption of interoperable digital tools and enable the sharing of data.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I take it that your belief is that Infoway did such a bang-up job with the last $300 million that we should give it another $50 million to execute this pivot on behalf of taxpayers.

[Elizabeth Toller]

They're very different programs.

[Jocelyne Voisin]

We want to make it very clear that the main agenda of Canada Health Infoway is the connected care agenda and developing those interoperability standards. The PrescribeIT program was, as she noted, a very different program, which started in 2016.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Is there no suspicion on your part that Canada Health Infoway is totally not fit for service? It blew $300 million. Maybe somebody else should be in charge of this.

[Elizabeth Toller]

Part of the assessment we'll share with you will demonstrate that there is no other player in Canada that is suitable to play this role. It has done a lot of great things over the years, in addition to its work on prescribing.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

What has it done?

[Elizabeth Toller]

It is responsible for getting all of our providers using electronic medical records—the 95% use that is now happening today. It is responsible for all the virtual care work—

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I'm going to cut you off there, Madam. I don't think that's true.

[Elizabeth Toller]

It is true. Their original goal was to enable the use of digital tools, and we have succeeded, with 95%—

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Miss, my hospital was using electronic medical records before Canada Health Infoway ever suggested it.