Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, I would like to tell Ms. Benoît that her presentation was very interesting. It's important that she took the time to testify about what she and many other young children and adults are going through. I was very touched by it.
Chronic diseases are diseases that people learn to live with. But because people learn to live with them, we seem to lose sight of them. They are insidious, they settle in our daily lives. Indeed, when someone has type 2 diabetes, it's a whole lifestyle process. It seems that at that point, the patient, or the victim, is made responsible.
We were talking about stigma earlier. Often, the person with the disease is blamed for the fact that they may have a bad lifestyle. That may be true, but we still need to do all the prevention and all the education upstream to avoid this kind of situation. I think that's what's constantly missing, and it's related to the fact that when diseases aren't as dramatic as a heart attack, for example, it strikes less of a chord. We know how striking a heart attack is, but we also know that many heart diseases often have diabetes as a determining factor. Because chronic diseases are less obvious, you get used to living with them and you lose sight of them.
What I find interesting in the approach taken by my colleague Ms. Sidhu is that we know that there have been discussions for years on national strategies and strategic frameworks. There have been since 2005, and there were discussions in 2018 around Diabetes 360. Today, we're being told that we need a bill, that we need to put all this in a legislative intent.
Very briefly, Ms. Sidhu, could you tell us why this is happening today rather than in 2005 or 2018? Why do we think it is essential that all these intentions be reflected in a legislative framework?