Health committee  I cannot make that undertaking. I'll have to speak to my minister about that, and we will provide it as soon as we can.

Health committee  Yes. I believe women's programs will continue as they are.

Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd be happy to answer that question. There is coordination that goes on at multiple levels. I'll name a few things, but it will not be an exhaustive list. A good example of coordination is CIHR, which will be here on Thursday. A key federal role is the research role.

Health committee  I'll take that. First of all, just generally, we do recognize that in parts of the country, and often more exacerbated in rural communities, there are shortages of doctors and nurses, and there's a need to take concrete steps to address that problem. Just to provide a general backdrop, the government will transfer, as the minister mentioned, $22.6 billion this year as part of the health transfer, and that grows by 6% a year.

Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I will attempt to answer all of those questions with a little bit of help from Meena Ballantyne, who is the assistant deputy minister for the Health Products and Food Branch. First of all, the first question was, did we take into account the practitioners' perspective on this?

Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. As the committee will know, mental health is a complex multi-faceted problem that is the concern of all governments in Canada and I would say the concern of lots of other folks in Canada. I think the Mental Health Commission, just to speak a bit more about that, has been a unique opportunity coming out of the report of the Senate committee on social affairs, and then of course the former chair of that, Mike Kirby, became the first head of the Mental Health Commission and has worked with all jurisdictions and with stakeholder groups to bring them on side.

Health committee  Madam Chair, if I may, I would like to introduce Anne Marie Robinson, the assistant deputy minister for First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, who may be able to elaborate a little bit.

Health committee  Mr. Rosenberg.

Health committee  I'll mention two things. One is the establishment of the Mental Health Commission of Canada a couple of years ago. I believe the government put in $130 million over 10 years. And then last year the Mental Health Commission received funding for a number of demonstration projects dealing with homelessness and mental health.

Health committee  Thank you for the question, Madam Chair. Specifically with respect to first nations, since the beginning of the aboriginal health human resources initiative, which was put in place, I believe in 2004, the government has been working with partner organizations and the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation to increase the number of aboriginal students pursuing health careers, including nursing and medicine.

Health committee  We have received the report dealing with indicators and we have accepted the Auditor General's recommendations for improving our health indicators. Progress has already been made in this regard. Obviously, first nations health indicators, for which the federal government is responsible, are an important priority.

Health committee  Thank you for the question. Madam Chair, with respect to the coordination, we have two initiatives under way currently, one with British Columbia and one with Saskatchewan, to work toward more integration of first nations health services into the provincial health system. We're a bit more advanced with B.C. than Saskatchewan.

Health committee  Thank you. I want to be clear that we're talking about the same thing. My comments earlier were about a $75,000 transfer from the Assisted Human Reproduction Agency of Canada to CIHR. I said this money will go to research, not to regulation.

Health committee  Madam Chair, the agency has already been established. Under section 8, some regulations are in place. The agency gives advice to people and shares information. It is therefore active but not at the level it will be once the complete regulations are in place. The agency is nevertheless working and this is how money is spent.

Health committee  Unfortunately, I cannot give you any details today. However I can find the information and send it to the committee in the next few days.