Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, Mr. Chairman, a few months ago I thought my hearing was really good and my eyesight was fine, but since then I find myself wearing all these cheaters here and maybe it is because we are talking to the Minister for Health and Social Services. Something that is going to be coming down the pipe is the aging population and what the department is doing about that, however I will not concentrate on that right now.
I am a little more interested, Mr. Chairman, in a couple of remarks that Ms. Ballantyne had about what seems to be a fairly dramatic shift in the way we might be able to see funding going to non-government organizations by way of pooling federal and territorial and perhaps aboriginal resources as a way of getting more efficiency and streamlining funding.
By the way, I applaud that. I think it is great to see that finally happening, but I have a couple of questions. Does the Minister know if this is exclusive to the Health and Social Services area, or are other initiatives underway in other areas, perhaps in Education or Justice, which also have a number of NGOs going along with them?
Related to that, Mr. Chairman, could the Minister give some assurance of just how committed the federal government is to this? Are we really looking at something that could be a substantive change in the way funding mechanisms are handled, or are we looking at something that may be an experiment? Is it going to be short lived? Is it not going to have all that much political horsepower behind it? I will stop there, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.