Health committee  I'll start, and Gigi may want to add. First of all I'll say that the issue of access to abortion services has been a long-standing concern. Over the last decade New Brunswick and P.E.I. have drawn the most attention and concern from us. There has been considerable evolution in N

Health committee  I think you might have to invite my colleagues from the Department of Finance to talk about that. It was a very complicated formula that has evolved over the years, but it took into consideration various issues related to taxation and fiscal capacity. People often said there was

Health committee  Maybe the fact that it exists is helping. The reality is, that formal process has actually never been used. It was put in place at a time when the debate between the federal government and provinces about the status of private clinics was very heated. It was a very charged envi

Health committee  I would not view it technically as part of the Canada Health Act. The general feeling about home care is that, particularly but not only for older Canadians who may have one or maybe multiple chronic conditions, those individuals may from time to time have acute episodes and need

Health committee  We're not going to say that we know about every single issue that may crop up across the country. We think we've got a pretty good idea of what's going on. We don't, however, have any authority to investigate. We cannot go out to a clinic and conduct an audit or demand to see the

Health committee  Well, we're hearing about this as well, maybe through the same sources, which are significantly through the media. I think I can tell you that most provincial and territorial jurisdictions do have systems for advance approval of procedures that are done out of the country. Howe

Health committee  I don't know that I would necessarily say resistance. There is always a delicate balance in a discussion about what priorities should be and within those priorities what actions should be taken. The government was quite clear in its platform commitments that it wanted to pursue

Health committee  There are only general references to mental health in the Canada Health Act. Regardless of that, I think everyone acknowledges that mental health services are very important, particularly for young people. If we think about children, teenagers, and young adults, mental health iss

Health committee  I think your point is well taken. There are challenges for individuals and families accessing mental health services in big cities, but the situation is compounded in less populous areas. We know, for example, there has been some good work done on delivering mental health service

Health committee  There are a couple of things I could mention. First of all, we support an organization called the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health. One of the things that it does is assesses the potential benefits of new technologies as they come on stream and provides advi

Health committee  I would start by saying that I'm not too sure the federal government can really hold provinces and territories or health care institutions or regional health authorities to account for what they do or do not do. What we can do is try to provide support. I'll go back to the examp

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  Well, maybe I'll identify a few areas in response to your question, which gets at the imponderables of health care policy in the country. First is the whole issue of those services that are, at this point, provided in the health care systems across the country on a discretionar

Health committee  That's correct. The act does not prescribe with any degree of specificity what services shall be provided and what specific quality standards shall prevail. That is up to the jurisdiction in question to determine.

Health committee  I'll make a distinction between whether or not there are data available and whether or not there's a requirement based on the results of those data to make adjustments where necessary, that is, where the performance of a particular health care system is not comparable with what i