Finance committee  Our argument is that it would be good to put these changes through a health impact assessment tool before they're taken into policy, to see what the potential impacts on health outcomes would be down the road. That's what we would have liked to see happen. But certainly we are ve

Finance committee  My brief response would be to put some accountability measures on the money that you transfer to them. That would be my brief response.

Finance committee  We know that the health care system has a lot of problems. It's responsible for about 25% of your health outcomes, which is not inconsiderable. One of the big issues we see as physicians is that the health care system only covers physician visits and hospital care. There are many

Finance committee  We know that the best return on investment, in terms of health outcomes down the road, is early childhood development and education. That means before you get to kindergarten. We know that the kids of people living in poverty do not do as well by the time they get to kindergart

Finance committee  Good morning. I'm very pleased to bring the Canadian Medical Association's perspective on income inequality to your committee. You may wonder why the CMA, which represents over 78,000 physician members, is actually concerned about income inequality. We know that every day, pat

Justice committee  Thank you very much for having us here. We appreciate it.

Justice committee  There may be some benefit to sanctioned versus unsanctioned. I'm not sure if that's true but it may well be so. But still, the basic premise of intentionally striking people's heads is something that the CMA is opposed to and that many physicians are opposed to. This still contin

Justice committee  Well, we're certainly interested in all sports being safer, and we've done a lot of work in terms of health promotion and injury prevention through time. But again, it's different from football. When you do a hit to someone else in football, the goal is to get that person out of

Justice committee  Yes. Our concern is very much regarding potential head injuries.

Justice committee  Caused from intentional strikes for the reason to incapacitate so the fight can't go on....

Justice committee  Well, certainly I think everybody knows about Muhammad Ali and his Parkinson's disease, which is felt to be as a result of repeated blows to the head. We do know from the boxing studies that there are, as I mentioned, potential long-term effects from repeated blows to the head. T

Justice committee  Well, I think probably the best way to avoid a serious head injury is to wear a helmet, although there's not a whole bunch of literature on whether helmets are completely protective for concussions.

Justice committee  Assuming it does go through, I think the recommendations of my colleague here are all very pertinent. Clearly he's very concerned about doing the sport in the safest way possible. I think what he's recommended in terms of the pre-, during, and post-assessment would be very import

Justice committee  Thank you very much for that. We're happy to work, at any time, in terms of improving health outcomes for patients. If there's a conversation that has been started, we'd be happy to engage in that for sure. Perhaps I misunderstand mixed martial arts, but I must say, the times I'

Justice committee  I'm sorry, but I got a little bit lost on the section 83 bit. Can you just go back to it?