Public Accounts committee  In full transparency, I would have to do a full review of the department. One thing that does come to mind is that, for data from our nursing stations that support communities, we should have access to better systems. These go beyond just the nursing station in terms of how they

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for your question. The pandemic has exacerbated the housing shortage in some of our indigenous communities. We know this will affect not only community members, but also staff, such as nurses, professors and police officers who come from elsewhere and work in those com

Public Accounts committee  Absolutely. We will be able to submit to you the investments planned over the coming years. As I mentioned, $991.5 million has already been invested in communities. At this time, 1,000 projects are underway. There are 3,500 new homes, 7,000 renovation projects have been carried o

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much. I should specify that, at the time of the audit, it was in fact 51 communities, but we have transferred the service in one case. If I use the figure of 50, it's to show that we're at a different place now than we were, and it's great news in terms of the age

Public Accounts committee  I have three thoughts on that. The first one, in terms of best practices, is probably the most important: ensuring that we have culturally relevant health services for indigenous communities. That means training. It means hiring indigenous professionals to manage health services

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. I'm sorry.

Public Accounts committee  I would start by saying that everything we do is in partnership with indigenous leadership across this country. When we talk about our response to COVID, it was never just ISC nursing staff. There were always first nations health pandemic response teams. There were mobile mental

Public Accounts committee  Maybe we can be more precise, but it is part of the action item. It is part of our talent acquisition and management. They are central to it, and it's not limited to our nursing staff. We do that even for our senior executive team. We have indigenous leadership on the interview b

Public Accounts committee  I want to clarify that we have 862 nurses working for us. The 18 were specific to medical health officers, like Dr. Anderson in Manitoba whom we worked very closely with on the pandemic. I want to make it clear that the 18 are physicians. Is that enough? No, this is the network

Public Accounts committee  That is our tool's objective, to better understand not only what we are purchasing and what we are doing in terms of contracts, but also what is being done in warehouses. That second initiative will help us. We must not only be able to properly understand what is in the warehous

Public Accounts committee  Yes, I know. Concerning the tool as such, we are carrying out a test, which actually has two components. One concerns outgoing personal protection equipment items and the other one concerns incoming items. The test we do involves everything. That test will be done before the end

Public Accounts committee  With our 12-month supply we're in a much better position than we were prepandemic. I think we do our best to get to communities as quickly as we can. We also have to remember that some of these communities are quite remote. It's not like shipping the supply just to Toronto. It's

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for your question. We were able to recognize that, although the 2014 strategy was a hybrid one, we were exclusively counting on equipment from the Public Health Agency of Canada. Moreover, as we have seen since the beginning of the pandemic, there was a true shortage o

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much for the question. I think we definitely took the recommendation on, and I think there would be two components that I would point to in terms of the department's response. The first would be around the automated tool, which is very much centred on both outbou

Public Accounts committee  In terms of the question itself, I would say that the [Technical difficulty—Editor] that were requested in terms of surge during the pandemic were very much to complement the additional requirements beyond the staff we currently have in communities. It would be a different type o