Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all for your presentations.
I understand the complexities of privacy issues and provincial legislation and regulations and of trying to work your way around those, but it seems to me, as a simple citizen, that if the Canada Health Infoway or the health providers out there are using the information about me for the purposes it was gathered, then it's being done on my behalf to improve my outcomes. So it would seem to me that for most of the users of this information, if you could separate their data from their personality, then I wouldn't have any problem with it. It wouldn't matter to me if anybody in this country, any researcher, etc., knows there is a Canadian of a certain weight with certain medical conditions, and of a certain age. I don't want my insurance people to know that; I don't necessarily want all this information out there, but as far as the medical practitioners are concerned, they can know there's such an individual.
I want the people who will have to work with me to have my identity and all of that information immediately. I'm willing to take a little bit of a risk for that; I'm taking a little bit of a risk that maybe somebody would get some information I'd rather they not have, provided that the people who do need it will have it. I don't know if that's the same risk as my medical records flying off a movie set.
So I hope that we will be able to find such an accommodation and that the provinces are working with the federal government in modifying their regulations and legislation in a way that we can get that one day.
Are you seeing any progress in that area, Madam Stoddart?