We know that 50% of health outcomes are determined by the socio-economic determinants of health, and we think that if we actually take a look at health policy through a health impact lens...when we look at it that way, it's best to start thinking about what might happen downstream to health outcomes if we get involved very early on in the policy development process, rather than trying to fix problems downstream later on.
We would like to see all cabinet policy go through this particular assessment. There are tools that have been developed in certain areas of the world to look at health impact assessment, and, as I mentioned, the Public Health Agency of Canada is well placed to do this.
The Canadian Medical Association itself is actually developing a tool to look at how to do health impact assessments and would be more than willing to work with the federal government on this at any time. But the key thing is that if we're going to try to look at the downstream effects of policy, if we're going to improve the downstream effects, we need to look upstream when we're first developing policy by using this particular tool. It has to be brought in very early in the decision-making process.