The jurisdictional issue is a big problem, but what's crucial is the capacity to have readily accessible information transferred amongst provinces so that health-care providers at the front line are able to understand what is going on with their patients and know what medications they've had, what previous treatments they've had. There are individual provincial initiatives in these regards in many provinces right now, but there is not a unified strategy across the country to support a communications strategy. And even though the actual implementation may be provincial, it occurs to me that there should be a role amongst the federal transfer payments to link to communications strategies that require communication between the provinces as well as within provincial health care systems. In fact, if you look to your Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse strategy, you'll see that this group is working hard to try to bring the players together. I think supporting that strategy would be hugely effective, because one of the challenges we face all the time is the adequacy of information.
On December 9th, 2013. See this statement in context.