Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a number of questions on this page. I wanted to start off with looking at the federal funding that we have, which is due to expire in a year’s time, give or take. The information that we have currently indicates that much of the federal funding is being used for supplementing, I guess, our medical staff, doctors, nurse practitioners and the other large piece is supplementing our medical travel.
I mentioned in my comments the other day that I’m quite concerned with the fact that we haven’t yet got an extension of this federal funding. I appreciate the fact that the department is working on it, but I’d like to ask the Minister specifically about the money, federal money that we have, which is used to supplement physician services and supplement nurse practitioners. I think it’s also used to supplement nurses in small communities as well to a certain extent.
So I’d like to know from the Minister, he mentioned yesterday that while if we lose the money we’re just going to have to find it. I’d like to know from the Minister if we don’t have a bit of a better plan than just sort of a wing and a prayer and hoping that we’re going to get this money and if we don’t, well, then we’ll look at things at that time. What kind of a plan do we have in place to deal with the programs which are now, in terms of physician services and nurse practitioners and other programs within those sorts of provision of medical services, what plan do we have to keep those programs going when we lose federal funding?