Public Accounts committee  It is something that we're doing in the department.

Public Accounts committee  For the non-insured health benefits program, we have the information, yes.

Public Accounts committee  It will help on the prevention side, which is the dimension you were talking about, in how we will be able to reach out to more communities to work with them in developing prevention, and making sure that good habits are there from the oral health perspective. That's, in part, wh

Public Accounts committee  We have to work with the communities. We have to have professionals going there, working with the communities, reaching the families and the children, and actually working with them in training and showing them the benefits of good oral health. Doing this with the partners is the

Public Accounts committee  First of all, I would say that there were regional plans. We were working on this. We knew that the oral health situation of first nations and Inuit was poor. We have programs that were developed for this. We made our decisions on an evidence base. We worked with experts in devel

Public Accounts committee  We acknowledge there is progress to be made. The national strategy is not necessarily everything that will fix everything here. As was mentioned, those issues are broader than just a strategy at the national level on how we will collect the data among those programs. It's an impo

Public Accounts committee  Dr. Plante, do you want to try that one?

Public Accounts committee  In terms of basic health services, I think it's important not to make choices as such. Basic health services should be provided to indigenous people as they are to all Canadian citizens. Access to health services is important, whether it is access to mental health services, prima

Public Accounts committee  Yes, and the difficulty with clients is this. Let's say you're a client, for example, for a filling. It's not something that on a day-to-day basis you wake up and ask, “What exactly is the new policy and what should I or do I have access to?” We need to find a way to make sure th

Public Accounts committee  Our understanding of this is that you keep the budget as it was 10 years ago, it's difficult to get the same result that you had a few years ago. We're quite confident that with this new amount of money, we'll be able to reach out more—

Public Accounts committee  If we have been looking for...? Sorry?

Public Accounts committee  No. What we've been doing is transferring the dollars to the communities, the same ones that had these programs. With the same amount of money, they were trying to continue the same services and to do what they could, but the costs, for example, of hiring people, the therapist an

Public Accounts committee  Our objective over the long term is not to go program by program with first nations, Inuit, and Métis communities, but to go with the fiscal relationship and their community plans so we can address holistically the different elements, sectors, and issues they face, rather than go

Public Accounts committee  What do you mean?

Public Accounts committee  We have almost 16,000 or 17,000 dentists across the country. The real difficulty is more with the therapists.