I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today. I want to throw out a few questions.
Mr. Keon, maybe you could start with the answers, because I do appreciate your institutional knowledge. I think you've been coming to this committee since I've been on it, on and off since 2004.
You made a comment that I think is really important. Why are we doing this, and how do we actually define the problem? We've heard from different people that some of the statistics we're relying on are from a Canadian standpoint and haven't even been really updated since the Romanow report.
A lot of assumptions are being made. I believe Mr. Davies repeated a couple of things we've heard over and over, that 20% of Canadians don't have adequate coverage. Yet we don't really know who defines adequate coverage. He mentioned seven million Canadians walking around without coverage; they can't afford the medicines they need. We do know there are a lot of Canadians out there who don't have coverage, but they don't seem to have a problem financially covering their medication, maybe because of different financial situations they find themselves in.
If you take a look at a long-term situation, and, as I said, some of these statistics have not been updated since the Romanow report, Canada has changed a lot. Employment benefit relationships have changed greatly. We have more people working part-time. We have pensions and pension benefits that have changed. We have more seniors, as a demographic moving into a situation where maybe they have coverage now because they're a little bit older.
I want your opinion and that of the rest of the panel. Do you think the federal government should update its statistics to ensure that we have an accurate picture of the current medical benefits situation in Canada?
Also, without recent statistical evidence, do you think our recommendations could be irrelevant, albeit well-intentioned? What are your thoughts on that?