The GN’s health recommendations

Saying that the federal government must commit itself to ensuring equity in health care for Nunavummiut, Ed Picco, Nunavut’s health minister, offered these recommendations this week to Roy Romanow’s one-person commission on the future of health care in Canada:

• Funding programs for federal health programs should be based on need, not on population size or per capita formulas

• National goals for Inuit and First Nations health care, using the standards of health care available to all other Canadians should be developed

• The federal government should design national health programs for Inuit to address the unique needs created by living in northern, remote areas

• The many scattered aboriginal health programs offered by several federal departments should be consolidated and integrated so that there is unity of purpose and “a critical mass of resources to actually make a difference”

• The federal government should ensure that health infrastructure in remote, rural and northern areas of the country is comparable to Canadian norms.