Madam Speaker, in February 1999 the advisory council on health infostructure presented its final report to the health minister entitled “Canada Health Infoway: Paths to Better Health”. Over the course of 18 months the 24 member advisory council met and worked with a number of collaborators, including the provinces, territories and other federal departments and various health stakeholders across Canada.
One of its recommendations was the subject of a question I posed last week to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health. It has to do with report cards on our health system. One of the key recommendations was that the government support evaluative analyses and consensus building to develop yardsticks and fair measures of health care system performance and health status of Canadians.
These analyses would form a basis of report cards to the public that will improve the overall accountability of the health care system.
I would like to repeat the question I posed to the parliamentary secretary in French, as I tried to do in question period.
One of the main recommendations in the final report of the advisory council on health infrastructure is the provision of a public report card so as to improve the general accountability of our health care system.
Since the Government of Canada is responsible for health care standards, does the department support this recommendation and will it undertake discussions with the provinces and territories with the aim of implementing this method of accountability?
Basically Canadians value our health care system and they need this kind of information. They need to know about how our health care system is performing. They also need to know that the dollars that are invested in our health care system are being used widely in every province and in every territory.
I raised the question with the parliamentary secretary with a view to getting a little more information about how this would work, whether or not the government was supportive of it and whether or not there was more information she could give us on report cards on our health care system.