I will leave that to your in camera discussions.
A third point I wanted to mention--again, I'm sure this is not new to you--is the communication issue and the need for consistency of messages. We feel strongly that there does need to be a sole source of communications. Messaging has been coming from federal, provincial, and local levels. They need to come more quickly and they do need to be consistent.
We do respect the right of every jurisdiction to shape their own communications in every health delivery issue, but right now we feel that the right of Canadians to receive clear, consistent messaging should override any other needs. We do feel that there's a situation where many players feel the need to say something about this, and say it in their own language. For the average Canadian, that's simply not acceptable at this point in time.
There also are communication gaps at the community level. I'll combine two points: a great deal of the focus has been on the acute care setting, and for obvious reasons, but we know from all of the information provided from the specialists that this is a community-based issue. The information is not being conveyed appropriately to health professionals in that particular setting.
Another area of consideration, because we do try to bring forward information on solutions and not just problems, is that the health professional associations are a tremendous source of information sharing. They have not been utilized. We've been trying for years to have greater utilization of the health professions.
For example, many of you know about the Health Action Lobby, HEAL, which has been around for many years, a coalition of 38 national health associations. It's a naturally built community, if you will, to get information directly in the hands of every health provider, which can only consolidate and strengthen the information being received from other sources. So I would put that forward.
Clearly the need for sufficient staff to care for the anticipated ill patients is a great concern. We're concerned about the coordinating piece of it. I would put a few words on the table, such as labour mobility, AIT, and licensing issues, which I know we've tried to address since SARS hit, but I'm not quite sure how well they have been addressed, even with all provinces signing on to AIT. Are there implementation processes in place so that if the crisis situations are not in the entire country at one time, but are at different times in different parts of the country, we can share human resources to help and address the staff shortage that we absolutely anticipate?
The education of health professionals is perhaps the final point that I'll bring forward. These are folks who will be administering the vaccine. They do require specific information on the safety and the risk of the vaccine.
I might also highlight what might seem a minor issue: expiry dates on the various drugs and the vaccinations. We know that the dates provided are the best possible dates, but we also know that many medications are valid beyond that day. So if supplies are in short supply and great demand, how do we find out which ones can in fact be used safely and effectively beyond the expiry date that is given? It's perhaps a minor problem, but it could be a big part of a solution if we find ourselves in a great shortage.
There are a number of other issues that we won't go into detail on at the moment. Perhaps they will come out in conversation. These include the psychological and ethical sides that arise in situations of resource allocation, and the tough decisions that need to be made. We feel that these have not yet been addressed in the face of just the basic logistics of getting vaccination out.
We do recognize that dealing with this unfolding situation is no easy task for all of us. We do welcome this opportunity to further the dialogue and work on solutions with everyone who's part of this committee, and we look forward to taking part in the discussion after the presentations.
Thank you.