We've had some of those conversations. We work very closely with CIHI, and I just want to make sure that there's no misunderstanding. CIHI has been extremely collaborative and supportive of the kinds of efforts we make. It's limited by its budget, its bandwidth, and its ability to collect and aggregate information. That's a challenge we face together.
It's also limited in that it has access to some data, which is collected inside hospitals, but CIHI doesn't have the mandate to collect, for example, emergency department data or data from long-term care homes, at least some data in physicians' offices, laboratory data and so on.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said it's a challenge to even be allowed to talk to yourself. My sense is that the firewalls that are up there are not because of anybody's ill will but because of levels of concern—perhaps appropriate, perhaps not appropriate—that will only be surmounted if we can get all of the individuals, groups and custodians into one room at one time with some leadership and direction from public health agencies, at either the provincial level or national level, who will help adjudicate between these various concerns and come up with a single type of strategy.
I think we have tried to have individual conversations with individual privacy commissioners, but I'm not sure that is the most fruitful way of trying to solve this problem.