These include primary care to First Nations people on reserves, and some services to the RCMP, Correctional Services, the Armed Forces and veterans. The second area falls under the broad category of protecting the health of Canadians. The Minister of Health serves as a health advisor to Canadians on issues of importance and concern to them. The third area of federal responsibility is support of the health care system. This includes instruments such as the Canada Health Act, federal-provincial transfers and research funding.
Transfer payments can take many forms.
They can be conditional or non conditional. This, of course, is an extremely large and important area and it is one I will come back to shortly. The fourth area of federal responsibility in health is to promote strategies to improve the health of the population. This responsibility, too, cuts across several departments including Human Resources Development. To carry out these broad responsibilities the federal government has a number of tools or levers at its disposal.