Public Accounts committee  Sir, the two that I'm hoping will play catch-up are our two largest provinces. As part of that methodology and equation, we look at the population distribution. When you look at the population distribution, if I can get Ontario with the provider registry, say, and Quebec with the

Public Accounts committee  Again, I want to be clear. We're lagging in the electronic medical space, which is in clinicians' offices. Those numbers are at about 37% today. But we're not lagging in some of the drug information systems, the diagnostic information systems, the lab information systems that we

Public Accounts committee  If we have a patchwork of systems, then we've failed in our job. Our job is basically to make sure we have a coherent, interoperable basic system, and I can assure you, sir, that we're working at that very, very diligently.

Public Accounts committee  There's a whole host of safeguards and principles that we've operated on from the get-go. One of them was that information systems of this nature should be coming out of the private sector. We are not funding governments to build huge bureaucracies to develop these systems. The

Public Accounts committee  Sir, this is the way the target is measured. We have six core systems: drugs, diagnostic imaging, lab results, a provider registry, a client registry, and some clinical reports. As we look at a province, if they have 100% of their database completed in five areas but zero in one

Public Accounts committee  Infoway was set up by the first ministers as a national organization to work with the federal government and to work with the provinces and territories to move this agenda along. The basic mandate was to accelerate the adoption of these systems. One of the first things Infoway di

Public Accounts committee  No. I've answered that question before. Infoway's funding absolutely did not go to any funding of that. We didn't even have a contract with e-health or with the Smart Systems for Health Agency.

Public Accounts committee  We absolutely do. For the programs we invest in, if they are drug information systems, lab information system, diagnostics client registries, we will have their plans; there's no question. But if I'm not investing in a home care service, or if I'm not investing in a long-term car

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. There are a lot of questions there, and with all due respect, sir, I think there is a bit of tainting there of the province that you live in—and that I live in, as it happens. For the record, none of that $1 billion that was spent in Ontario was federal funds that

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question, Madame. I believe those are problems that will be overcome. I have to say that our priority is to get those standards working at local and regional and jurisdictional levels. It's really important, as the people move around from their GP to hospitals

Public Accounts committee  Basically, we publish through this collaborative mechanism—which is basically, as I said, the clinicians, the private sector, and governments—what standards need to be worked on and when they need to be worked out. It's a very expensive process to get these standards. What are

Public Accounts committee  Privacy is a very big issue for us, and mercifully, as of today, we haven't had any major failures around it. There have been some incidents. This is what Infoway does. In terms of our blueprint, our architecture, we're very clear on what the privacy and the security arrangemen

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, I apologize if I've left this committee with any sense that we're not making progress.

Public Accounts committee  We absolutely are as a country. I've talked about the diagnostic imaging systems. In the diagnostic imaging systems we've now basically thrown away all those X-ray forms. About 70% to 80% are now digitized, which means, in fact, that those X-rays can be looked at from anywhere.

Public Accounts committee  Certainly the jurisdictions that have the comprehensive drug information systems—that is all drugs for all people—can in fact do that.