Health committee  Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for inviting Health Canada to appear today. We are pleased to be here. I won't introduce my colleagues, since the chair has already done so. Children's health and wellness is a critical issue with potential life‑long impacts. You

Health committee  Thank you for the correction there. Indeed, it is a $2-billion top-up for the CHT. On the question related to surgical backlogs, that 700,000 surgical backlog number is all surgical backlogs in Canada, including those for children. We do not have a specific number related to chi

Health committee  Again, we're working very closely with stakeholders, provinces and territories to really understand the issues and challenges, as well as innovative measures that can be taken. A lot of very good policy work and consultation is under way to really understand the problem and devel

Health committee  Budget 2022, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, announced funding to accelerate the integration of internationally educated professionals, so there's the foreign credential recognition program as well as enhancement to the student loan forgiveness for health professionals in r

Health committee  I am going to say a few words, but I will call on my colleagues from the Public Health Agency, on Candice, for example, to talk about the social determinants of health. If we think about the health of children before and after the pandemic, mental health has certainly been a hug

Health committee  We have closely monitored hospital capacity across provinces and territories throughout the pandemic to ensure, mainly, that people with COVID-19 can get the treatment they need. In terms of the impacts it has had on children, that's a bit beyond what we can address at the commi

Health committee  I don't have in-depth knowledge of Alberta's plan, but we can certainly take a look at it and get back to you. Obviously, the Government of Canada has taken several measures to support the mental health and well-being of children through the pandemic, including Wellness Together

Health committee  I would say that while we don't have the word “children” in our titles, all of us definitely consider the needs of children in terms of our policy and in terms of consulting with stakeholders on various policy issues, including drugs for rare diseases, for instance, as well as me

Health committee  I would agree that it's very important to consider the needs of children and youth in creating policy. In fact, I think several of our initiatives show that there is a priority on children. I talked about children and youth mental health being one of the priority areas identifie

Health committee  I don't think we're in a position to answer that question for the honourable member, given that it's the prerogative of Transport Canada.

Health committee  I'm actually going to turn that over to my colleague, Candice, at the Public Health Agency, who has responsibility for those areas.

Health committee  In fact, we think that the $2 billion will be enough to support provinces and territories in reducing the surgical backlogs. We've done some analysis that is proxy-based, looking at the health human resources that would be required—

Health committee  Yes, the provinces have been asking for that. Indeed they have. The $2 billion in the one-time top-up, as we said, will support them in addressing a surgical backlog.

Health committee  What I'm saying is that the government provided a one-time top-up to deal with a very specific issue related to the surgical backlogs that were accumulated over the course of COVID-19.

Health committee  I'm sorry. I'm getting an echo. Was I supposed to answer that question?