Health committee  The federal government has statistics, which I have in my briefcase and which are on the web. It's aboriginal/non-aboriginal, under Inuit, first nations, Métis. Many of the provinces do not publish on-reserve and off-reserve statistics, and that's part of what one might call a culture of secrecy.

Health committee  Yes. To reiterate, from 1960 to 1980, the great physician, Stefan Grzybowski, oversaw a very aggressive medical program for TB under very difficult social circumstances in what is now Nunavut--poorer housing and nutrition, etc., than we have today--and they achieved the most remarkable decrease in the incidence of TB recorded in the world.

Health committee  I want to say that I've seen a great deal of leadership on this issue from Dr. Ed Ellis from the Public Health Agency of Canada, and he's a hero of this process. I would just say that when you have a TB program, let alone an HIV or hepatitis or cancer program, in which there are different leaderships, jurisdictions, you are going to get fragmentation, and that may be okay for hepatitis or cancer--I don't think it is--but not for tuberculosis.

Health committee  On the first point, I would just say that my observation is that in some regions--Alberta is one of them--FNIHB and the province get along very well and work together cooperatively. But in other parts of Canada, that doesn't happen. It's dependent on personality, and it shouldn't be.

Health committee  I want to thank the committee for inviting me. I speak as an individual rather than on behalf of any organization. I have four recommendations. One, there must be one single unified TB program in each province for both aboriginal and non-aboriginal people. The program must be accountable to and the responsibility of the chief provincial officer of health.