There are a lot of different roles that can be played. One of the things to think about, though, is having the right information to make healthy choices. There is also the idea of empowerment, which is important. The federal government could support the education and deployment of technologies that allow people to make informed decisions and organize around them, whether it's through a civil society advocacy mechanism, through creating new business opportunities, or through other means.
For example, with chronic disease, a lot of it has a connection to food. If you are in one of these what we call food deserts—areas where food is not accessible; you're food insecure—being informed about how to eat is somewhat irrelevant. You need to be able to take some type of action, and maybe it's about creating a new opportunity to do that, or something like that. I think there's an ability to create a mechanism to actually help people organize as well as be adaptive, with their health providers and their communities, because it's going to be quite different in different places.
It's one thing to make healthy decisions, but you also have to look at the systemic effects and be able to take action on them as well, simultaneously. I don't think it's an either/or situation; I don't think it works that way. We have way too much diversity in Canada for that to work.