Thank you very much for the question.
The mental health state of nurses has been a concern from early on, first because of the fatigue, which we projected. Then, because of the moral decisions that were being made in other countries, they were pretty concerned about the challenges they were facing at points of care—physicians and others, too, but since we're speaking about nurses....
We did a survey at CNA of a group of nurses who reported before COVID that their mental health was rated as good or excellent. Eighty per cent of them rated that. It's down to about 45% at this point in the pandemic, so that's a serious change.
We're hearing every day about unbelievable fatigue. Also, there's the burden of watching people die with their families on the other side of a window. It's just compounded levels of grief and fatigue. There's no buffer in the system. There's no other group to come in and help take over, so I think they're pretty pressed.
One of the challenges we all face in this country is that you have to wait a long time for a lot of mental health treatment and you have to pay. We certainly hope that governments will do all they can to support access to mental health treatment for all health care providers—we can talk about society later—at rates they can afford or, if not that, then free.
On your second question about virtual care, as you know, there has been this giant barrier since time immemorial, and suddenly it was freed up, which is a very good outcome of the pandemic. Now we need to understand.... It seems to be working pretty well. In some places, 76% of primary care is delivered virtually.
Who is it working well for? Who has broadband and who doesn't? That's a serious problem. In my beautiful home in farmland here in eastern Ontario, I sometimes might as well be in Iqaluit. It's hit-and-miss. Even on these sorts of appearances, I worry if I will have broadband. If we want people to work at home and send pictures and videos of their problems to their doctors and so on, we really need a strong hand in expanding the access to broadband—