Thank you very much, Mr. Van Bynen.
It's been amazing to watch—just as an observer, let alone being an RN in the job I'm in—how quickly we were able to make that transition. When we surveyed nurses, polled some of our members, 70% had moved to virtual care options in their practices. We've known in nursing for quite some time that nurse lines, nurse-led care and nurse-led models of care, for example, are very satisfying to the public and have great outcomes. They are the same as or better than traditional models, have the same or less cost and are as satisfying to the public. We would absolutely strongly encourage more virtual care.
There are not enough of us to do it all, so it does extend our reach. The visits are shorter. We would absolutely strongly support it. One of the issues, though, that's been brought to us by our own members is that you need a reasonable amount of bandwidth to do some of that, and that's become a problem across the country.
One of our nurse leaders in Nunavut, for example, told us that just to do a Zoom meeting they use up their entire month's worth of bandwidth, and then they are paying by the minute, and so on. The other pieces have to be put in place, but we would strongly advocate for more virtual care.