Thank you, Member Sidhu, for a great question. I'm very proud of the work we've been doing with the Government of B.C. over the last 10 years to build toward this program. I am working within the ministry under a non-disclosure agreement to assist the ministry in evaluating the implementation of the program. I have access as well to independent research we've been conducting at UBC on health administrative data. I can share with you things that we've found on our own but not the wonderful, amazing things that we're finding within the government in our own evaluation.
What we can see from the health administrative data access that we have through the university is that we have thousands of people requesting these new contraceptives and the most highly effective contraceptives since the policy was put in place about a year ago in B.C. There are thousands every month. In fact, we had such a surge, such sustained requests for these most effective contraceptive methods, which have been out of reach for people in their personal and household economies before this, that the B.C. media has been reporting on the wait-lists in the health system and the service factors that are now being addressed to be able to meet this unmet need. When you see that even the media notices there was such a high degree of unmet need in the province that the rush of people to access intrauterine devices and contraceptive implants....
This matchstick-sized device that people can put in their arm has a lower rate of pregnancy than tubal sterilization, yet it can be removed at any time. It can last for up to three years. People are rushing to be able to get these more effective methods rather than what we've had before. The rates for birth control pills might have nearly 100 times as many people pregnant each year.
Yes, B.C. has been a success story. We are superexcited about the numbers we're seeing from the comprehensive data within the government and even from the data available in media reports and through the publicly accessible data we can access through UBC. It's an out-and-out success story. This is a way that people are now meeting their needs to be able to stay in school, to contribute to the workforce and to realize their own dreams for whether and when to have children and how to space them.