Mr. Chairman, public health is one of those community issues that we continually try to deal with. I would think that one of the areas that has been identified in the work of the public health nurses or at the community level is, given that they deal with a lot of different things like mental health and social issues, sometimes their time is confined to dealing with the clinical operation of the public health unit. I am talking generally and about the majority of communities that don't have a hospital facility.

One of the things we have tried to do over the last six or seven years is to provide ongoing nurse training accelerated programs where the ANSIP program is available to public health nurses, so they are better able to function at the community level, as well as the continued support of the community health representatives in the community. In the Keewatin a number of community health representatives graduated which gives a very strong component, if used correctly, to these health centres. They are liaisons between the communities and the health centre.

In putting together health, social services and these components of health support services, we would like to look towards a longer approach. This would be something that we can do in dealing with communities: how best these groups of health and social workers can consolidate a program to complement each other's work. At the same time, I would like, in the near future, to bring forward more formula-based support for public health or health personnel in a community, more in line with how we do the formula in the Department of Education for teachers. In a lot of the communities, there hasn't been a change over the last seven or eight years in the number of nurses in a community. If a community had one nurse with a population of 250, since the community grew to 350, the number of nurses hasn't changed. I think this has to be addressed in the short term. The working together of these different health and social services providers will determine where people can deal with preventative educational requirements, but still there is a lot more to do in terms of determining the make-up of what is required at a community level in these health fields.