Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.
It's a generous report. I'm not sure I agree with it; maybe I've been tainted a bit in Ontario.
Let me go to the report. I understand that a comment came out at the end of June or early July 2009. According to Health Canada Infoway, of about 322 million doctor visits that we have per year, around 94% result in hand-written paper records. When we compare Canada's position in terms of our electronic health records, we find that in the Netherlands, 98% of health records are electronic; in New Zealand, 92%; in the U.K., almost 90%; in Australia, 80%. Only the United States fares worse than Canada. I'm confused.
We have an October 2009 report from the auditor in Ontario showing that instead of being near the head of the list, Ontario is near the back of the pack when it comes to electronic health records. Where is the Department of Health, or Infoway? It seems that we hand money over. There was a billion dollars in corruption that happened in Ontario. That is partly, I'm assuming, federal dollars; maybe partly it is provincial dollars.
My point is, quite honestly, that this started in 2001; we are now in 2010. We are behind the pack in just about everything that you talk about, although I know Ms. Dodds talked about the doctors and patients receiving a benefit in comparison with some of the other countries. I think in Ontario and Canada that's what needs to be a priority. In health care, patients should be about priority, and not systems, and not computers. They need to be a part of that; the patients come first.
I understand the significance of the electronic and the digital records. We understand the need for them. But quite honestly, I believe we have not been accountable for the dollars that have gone to the system. I just don't understand why now we're developing strategic plans, in 2010. I read somewhere here that in 2006 we revised the blueprint, five years after 2001. Please encourage me. It would seem that in 2001 we had an Infoway set up by the government that threw money out without direction, and it took until about 2006 to start to get some organizational part of it in place. There is no strategic planning; there doesn't seem to be much accountability. Provinces have been all over the map in terms of continuity.
So I ask you, Mr. Alvarez, and I would ask Ms. Dodds, and I would ask Sheila Fraser, the AG, to help me understand that actually this is a continuity, that there is compatibility, because I don't see compatibility mentioned in terms of the systems that are going in. We have provinces doing different things, and there are priorities.
That is a lot of questions, but I'm going to run out of time. That's why I put them forward. Don't be discouraged; I just need to understand it, because it has not gone well, from our perspective in Ontario.