Thank you very much, Vice-Chair, for asking that question, which is a really pertinent question, particularly in today's environment.
We know that Health Canada has a strategy to increase collaboration all the way from interprofessional education to interprofessional collaboration. There has been funding dedicated to that. However, there isn't funding dedicated to specifically giving project funding for those innovative projects that are actually producing very creative types of practitioners working together outside of the typical mainstream health providers. We have demonstrated at St. Michael's Hospital very clearly that chiropractic rightly fits in that environment, and we've gotten great feedback from our physicians, who work with us very closely, that we actually helped reduce their workload and improved their quality of work life by reducing the amount of time they spend on musculoskeletal patients where they feel they don't have a significant amount to offer those patients.
I think your question asked what should we do to improve collaboration. To do that you have to actually put in place a significant funding across Canada to help different facilities develop those proposals. The primary health care transition fund was an example of that, but it was the seed funding for pilot projects, which didn't provide any sustainable funding mechanism. We'd really urge the committee to implement, or make recommendations on, sustainable projects that have been successful, such as ours.
Thank you.