Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Dr. Zemek and Ms. Fuselli, thank you very much for coming here today. We appreciate it.
I'm going to follow up on what Mr. Fisher was mentioning about the reality of rural Canada and where we deal with that. Some of the greatest hockey players in Canada came from Saskatchewan. I will defer to him on one of the greatest; I'll give him that. They're both good. That said, it's an argument for a later day.
A lot of times what we're seeing in rural Canada is practitioners who aren't trained and don't have the skill set to make the diagnosis and do the assessment. Just because I graduated from chiropractic college or medical school or came from physical therapy and put “doctor” or whatever in front of my name does not mean that I'm an expert in this area. A lot of these professions do have certifications that recognize those aspects within themselves, and they regulate themselves along those lines.
I've spent 30 years in practice, and it is a big challenge when somebody comes in and says to me, “I have a concussion.” As a physician, you ask the question: “Do you really have a concussion?” Ultimately you ask them to describe it. They say they went into the boards and therefore they have a concussion, but no one asks them the question about how they went into the boards. When you say, “I fell at the blue line, slid feet first into the boards and snapped my head”, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have a concussion. You have symptoms that are very similar to a concussion, but more than likely you might have whiplash, as opposed to a concussion.
That's a big challenge. How do we help Canadians in rural Canada where we don't have those skills? We might, but we don't. How do we help so that our constituents and our population are being looked at, whether it's rugby, hockey or whatever the sport may be?