It's a great question, Don.
The statement at UBC was based on about 10 years of research that we'd undertaken in partnership with the Government of B.C. and that was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. We did due diligence by collecting data from every sector of the province through sexual health surveys and putting them into a complex series of modelling that looked at all of the alternatives for how to support people to reduce the rates of unintended pregnancy.
What we found is that universal coverage of first-dollar for all methods was the most cost-effective way for the Government of B.C. to go about this. We spent two years looking at alternative models, including fill-in-the-gap models and supplementing in different areas, and every time we moved away from universal first-dollar coverage, the rate of unintended pregnancies went up and the government's costs went up.
You asked how that relates to the rest of Canada. We've been working with Statistics Canada and the federal government for about eight years to take what we've learned in B.C.... Looking at the sexual health survey and at all representative parts of the population is what governments need to do to get the data to understand and improve health and equity in sexual and reproductive health.
As you may know, in the 2021 budget, the government funded Statistics Canada to roll out a national sexual health survey that will first field this fall. We will be able to do academic analyses disaggregated by a wide range of equity sectors in the population to answer exactly your question. In the meantime, we can take B.C.'s data and make it analogous to the rest of Canada. It should be relatively reasonable to hold those assumptions.