Thank you very much, Madam Chairperson.
First of all, thank you to the witnesses for coming today. I thought your presentations were all really well researched and had excellent information.
I think the thing that leaps out is that while there are some very good things going on, you actually only have to look at the map of age-friendly cities Madame Garon presented to see how much disparity there is across the country, whether it's the 40 nursing homes you're looking at or.... I think this is a glaring issue.
I also thought it was quite alarming to hear--I think it was from you, Ms. Estabrooks--that 80% of caregivers are unregulated. This is very alarming and I think it speaks to the need to have something like a continuing care act.
I have two questions.
Home care was in the Romanow report. It was meant to be the next big thing. It was in the 2004 accord. How do we move forward on this idea of a continuing care act? Do you see it as being under the umbrella of the Canada Health Act principles or is it something completely different?
In terms of drug safety, Mr. Poston, I agree very much with what you said. You touched on some very key points.
I wonder if you're familiar with the Therapeutics Initiative at UBC, which I think the pharmacology department is very involved with. It's happening in one province. I know that you're doing some stuff with your e-Therapeutics+, but it seems to me, again, that there's nothing across the country dealing with this issue of drug safety and drug affordability. Again, it was in the accord, but no progress has been made.
If you're familiar with the Therapeutics Initiative, is it something like that we should be rolling out? That, at least, would be giving us some progress.