Good morning. Thanks for allowing us to come and present to the finance committee today. We'd like to keep our presentation brief and draw your attention to the brief that we submitted. The written brief is submitted for further details.
The brief is a submission between the Pallium Foundation of Canada and the Canadian Society of Palliative Care Physicians, and it is supported by the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association, of which I'm the executive director.
I'm just going to speak for a minute or so and then turn it over to Dr. Pereira. We wanted to bring your attention to some startling facts.
Last year over 259,000 Canadians died. The Canadian Institute for Health Information for the first time tracked access to hospice palliative care programs in the four western provinces and estimated that, at best, only 35% of Canadians had access to these services.
There are some things we know.
We know that a 35% access to hospice palliative care will not support a healthy population, nor will it support the sustainability of existing health care delivery systems. We know that Canadians need to talk about end-of-life wishes, often referred to as advance care planning, but are not necessarily doing this. We know that the population of Canada is aging, and that by 2020 we'll have 33% more deaths in this country.
Family and friends are accepting greater responsibility in caring for the seriously ill and dying than ever before, under tremendous stress. This could easily become a burden that cripples Canadians' workforce productivity in the years to come.
Our existing delivery systems are stretched. They are not designed to support complex chronic care characterized by longer periods of decline and dying. We urgently need to support more practical solutions so that end-of-life care is integrated into acute care, long-term care, complex continuing care, residential hospice, and home and community networks.
The Quality End-of-Life Care Coalition of Canada, of which we're all members, believes it should be the right of every Canadian to die with dignity, free of pain, surrounded by a loved one, in a setting of their choice.
We really urgently need to better understand quality of life and economic factors when making decisions around settings of care and choices of care. We can do better in this country, and in doing so, we could support healthier communities, a more caring Canada, and a healthier, more competitive Canada.
José.