Maybe I can answer that.
My understanding is that there is a patient who obviously has a serious bacterial infection that requires antibiotics. Sometimes, based on what they understand the prevalence of bacteria to be within a community, physicians might give a broad-spectrum antibiotic, thinking that will most likely be able to deal with the infection. If it doesn't deal with the infection, and the patient continues to be sick, there's really, in a sense, no limit as to what antibiotics they can prescribe, or the amount. It would be prudent, if it's possible, to actually get a culture or a sample from the patient and test it in a laboratory to see what drugs it is sensitive to. By and large, for most infections that doctors see in a community setting in Canada, there will be an antibiotic that can effectively deal with it.
What Dr. Ouellette and all of us, and many others outside of this room, are worried about is that, with the overuse or the inappropriate use of antibiotics, it's just natural selection. Over time, the bacteria in the community and so on will become resistant if we keep using antibiotics. Then, when you actually need that antibiotic for a particular infection, that particular bacteria that's circulating in the community will be resistant.