Health committee  A lot of that was MRIs, CT scans, and all the rest of that. I don't remember offhand the amount of money, but a significant amount of money that was invested in 2003 or 2004--I forget which, I think 2003--was specifically targeted at improving the amount of diagnostic equipment across the country.

Health committee  I don't know.... Yes, everybody is dealing with capacity pressures and capacity issues, but do we have a pan-Canadian approach? Not that I'm aware of. From a personal perspective, that's an area in which I work, and I think that a lot of our capacity issues are also related to how we work together.

Health committee  We asked that question a couple of times, and we didn't get a specific date. It is our understanding that it met for around a year, perhaps a bit more. Oh, June 2006, so I guess it met for more than a year.

Health committee  Obviously there are many, many initiatives and a lot of effort in terms of health care renewal going on across the country. So individual jurisdictions are moving forward—there's no question of that—and progress is being made. I think the point we were trying to make was is there the pan-Canadian vision, the working together, to be clear that we're moving together, without disadvantaging particular jurisdictions and others?

Health committee  I would say the commitment has to be made on the part of all governments.

Health committee  To the best of my knowledge, no.

Health committee  No, that's right, and I think that's what--

Health committee  I think with anything, if you have a vision of where you want to go, that helps. The accord provided an overarching vision of where we wanted to go in terms of health reform, but outcomes don't get achieved very easily. Going from visions to outcomes you have to develop some very clear strategic plans, some strategic activities that need to be followed.

Health committee  That would be extremely helpful, and it reflects the spirit of the accord. There was to be pan-Canadian visioning and collaboration on moving things forward, so yes, reinforcing that would be lovely.

Health committee  Yes, I would think so.

Health committee  In terms of interpreting data, one of the strategic directions the Health Council has determined it's going to take over the next five years is to actually look at multiple sources of data and try to create more of a story that speaks to Canadians about where there is value for money in the system, about the things that we're doing right, about the areas where we should be doing things differently and so on, and perhaps place less emphasis on trying to collect comparable data when there are none.

Health committee  We need to be a bit more focused than we have been.

Health committee  I've just been told that our staff met federal government representatives to ask basically the same questions. Based on what our staff have said, they've developed their vision and started to define their objectives. But for the time being, we don't have anything to report, although the action plan has been developed.

Health committee  We need indicators and measures. We've already met with federal government representatives and we're going to continue our dialogue with them with a view to developing indicators and measures in the future.

Health committee  In my opinion, the Kelowna Accord and the blueprint on aboriginal health are federal-provincial-territorial accords. There have been no progress reports. Our role is to provide oversight and report our findings. We have nothing to report because there has not been much progress, as far as we can see.