Human Resources committee  It's been shown throughout our history that when that is applied to the census, it gives us the compliance without having to exercise the threat, and that's the point.

Human Resources committee  And for this fundamental information, I guess I would have to disagree.

Human Resources committee  Very, very briefly, I can tell you by doing those voluntary surveys on the west side, with repeated follow-up, explanations, parent meeting groups, that I get a 50% response rate compared to 80% to 90% in other neighbourhoods, without having to do that, simply because it's voluntary.

Human Resources committee  I think the basic issue that lies behind that is the difference between a voluntary and a mandatory census.

Human Resources committee  I can tell you, based on the fact that I do voluntary surveys in Saskatoon and in our region on a regular basis, that it is not the same. Depending on the audience I speak to, even using the authority of the health region and my office as medical officer, with repeated follow-ups with individuals I cannot approach the level of compliance that the mandatory census gives me with data, even when I'm collecting locally and people know me and how I'm using the data.

Human Resources committee  The issue, to me, is that there should be repercussions for not answering a mandatory census?

Human Resources committee  I don't know what the nature of those would be. Some kind of fine, probably.

Human Resources committee  In addition to that, in terms of not just planning for future transit and those types of issues--family time and quality of life--some of the issues around housing and the number of rooms versus number of people are used a lot, from an overcrowding perspective, for disease prevention planning, things like tuberculosis, influenza.

Human Resources committee  Very briefly, what I was referring to is at the rural and on-reserve level, as opposed to at the city level, where we do have a more representative sample of first nations, Inuit, and Métis with the census data. So the underrepresentativeness is the group as a whole, once you get into the rural and reserve areas.

Human Resources committee  I've certainly been speaking about this to a lot of friends and colleagues locally. What I've come to understand is that the vast majority of people have no idea how this information is used on a daily basis. While they initially may feel they understand the privacy and intrusiveness issues, once they hear how the data is actually used and that the protections are in place, I've found them overwhelmingly supportive of the need for collecting the information in the way that it's collected.

Human Resources committee  Good morning. My name is Dr. Cordell Neudorf. I'm the current chair of the Canadian Public Health Association and a local medical health officer in Saskatoon. I'm here with our CEO, Debra Lynkowski. CPHA represents the interests of public health professionals across the country, many of whom work at the local level in the 115 public health departments in Canada.

Health committee  I can certainly start on that. The challenge we have with many of the allied health professionals, I think, is that we don't have sufficient capacity in many of the provinces to be self-sufficient in training some of these professionals, so we require more of a pan-Canadian approach to generate the number of professionals we need.

Health committee  With the schools of public health being invested in by multiple universities, for example, you're starting to see some investment from the universities coming in. The core competencies models that have come out to list both common and unique core competencies in various disciplines in public health have been a huge benefit.

Health committee  Sure. Certainly what we've found in public health, with the new regionalization of health services occurring in much of the country...we see these skill sets not only as a service provision within the service of public health but as a support for the rest of the health system and health system planning.

Health committee  Thank you for this opportunity to appear before you, both as chair of CPHA and as informed by my practice as a public health leader in Saskatchewan. This committee has heard CPHA say on prior occasions that the vast majority of our health dollars within the country go to fund the treatment side of the system at ever-expanding cost, without a commensurate increase in people's health status.