I can certainly start on that.
The challenge we have with many of the allied health professionals, I think, is that we don't have sufficient capacity in many of the provinces to be self-sufficient in training some of these professionals, so we require more of a pan-Canadian approach to generate the number of professionals we need. Health inspection is a very good example; within Canada, there are only two or three places where they're trained. To take my own specialty as a public health physician, not all colleges of medicine have training programs in that area as well. So an approach that looks at what the need is overall has been necessary, and I guess that's what has driven the project.
But also what we have seen is a large change in the way the health system is delivered and organized, whereby there's a lot more emphasis on integration. We have heard about interdisciplinary teams, but also trying to use professionals for a better scope of practice, not just within their area of service but for the rest of the system. That has changed the way in which people need to be trained and the kinds of experiences they get in their training as they start to transition into the workforce.
Similarly, are the right positions in place for them, once they graduate, to continue practising in that environment? We've seen a bit of a disconnect between the field and the training program in that area, such that in some cases the field is a little ahead of the training program, and in other cases the training program is setting up an ideal interdisciplinary environment, but the students graduate and find it difficult to discover the same type of practice out there.
What we've been trying to do is get those two groups together in the health human resource planning—the training institutions and the field working a little more closely together, as one plans to provide the needs for the other.