Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank MP Zarrillo for sharing. That touched me. There aren't a lot of topics that get me really teary. I'm generally a very strong person who can hide a lot of emotion, but on this subject, I don't hide a lot of emotion.
My mom would have been one of the 400 to 600 women who would still be alive today had more screening been available. My mom passed away at 49 years old. She was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 48 years old. She left behind four little kids. I was the oldest, and I had to take on a lot of extra responsibility through her chemo, through her radiation, through her palliative stage and then, eventually, after her passing. This isn't something that I wish on anybody. This isn't something that I hope another person ever has to struggle with.
I am angry. I'm angry with the task force. I think these guidelines fail to recognize the value of the lives of women and their families and the fear they have created by saying that additional screening is somehow not valid.
I want to open it up to you, Dr. Seely. I really appreciated your piece. You talked about the fact that you're seeing more women pass away within one year of diagnosis. What do you think we could do, beyond what the guidelines have put forward, to make things better for the outcomes of women?