Thank you very much for the question. I will apologize to the interpreters from earlier for being trop vite. That's bad French, but there you go.
If we look across the country, Alberta really has set the stage for demonstrating what pharmacists can and should be doing in terms of primary care. As I noted in my remarks, Canadians are anxious to interact with their pharmacists and get more care from their pharmacists, so they are not the barrier in any way. In Alberta, there are prescribing rights, and in Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Manitoba and pretty much across the country, including the Yukon, they were recently given some authority during COVID for what is categorized as minor or self-identifiable ailments, such as shingles.
If I may, I will use a very personal example. I got shingles about six months ago. My primary care physician has not been in their office since March 2020. I had a call with my physician on the phone, and it was me who identified it was shingles. I went to the pharmacist, who looked at the medication that had been prescribed and intervened with my physician to get a different medication. I showed my pharmacist where the shingles were, and thankfully, it was in not too difficult a spot.
Pharmacists deal every day with their patients. I think no one in this country would disagree that we need more support for doctors and nurses, absolutely, but we are missing a huge opportunity by not better employing community pharmacists, who, as the stats from 2018 show, see their patients as much as 10 times more than patients would see their family doctor.
As we look ahead at the solutions, we need to ensure that we are looking at employing the resources we have, in addition to augmenting those that exist.