Health Committee on April 27th, 2022

[Dr. Ivy Lynn Bourgeault]

Thank you for the question. As a former Albertan, and where my family lives, in rural Alberta, I'll give a bit of a shout-out to them.

I am quite familiar with the data, the richness of data in Alberta, but there is the inability to align it. One thing that I will give a shout-out to Alberta for is that they have a registry of health care aides, which is what they call them. That, I think, is a really promising practice. I think we could use the opportunity, for professions we don't collect data on right now, to move directly towards a pan-Canadian system, as Madame Lefebvre said, in regard to pan-Canadian registration.

The other jurisdiction I will point out that has invested in standardized data across professions is Ontario, with the creation of the health professions database. They have created a minimum data standard, and what that means is.... What are the questions we're going to ask and the data elements that we need? It's insufficient. We have no data in Ontario in terms of indigenous identity or racial identity. However, they do a fairly good job, for example, on ability to provide services in another language—official languages being critically important in ensuring that people can access services in French and English. So—

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Fantastic. Because we don't have much time, I'm going to shift gears a little bit. I'm sorry about that. Again, anything you can provide to us in writing would be helpful.

Dr. Moineau, when you were talking about how there are so many students who are not placed, could you point to any jurisdictions that are doing a better job at having placements compared with the rest of the country?

[Dr. Geneviève Moineau]

The provinces that have increased that ratio, where there are more residency positions than there are graduates of Canadian medical schools, are doing better. I could provide you with that information by jurisdiction. There are some provinces that have taken that into consideration and are doing better.

The issue is that, when we look at this in a pan-Canadian way, up until recently, we were still at a ratio where for each 100 graduates, we had barely 101 to 103 positions. That's just too tight.

I can certainly provide you with that information.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Fantastic. Thank you.

To go on to questions around Pallium, I'm wondering if you can point to any provinces or territories that are doing a better job when it comes to palliative care.

[Dr. José Pereira]

Certainly. Thank you very much for the question.

Canada is a patchwork, and in many provinces, in different areas of palliative care, you'll see centres of excellence but also many gaps.

Having trained in Alberta, I want to give a shout-out to Alberta, because I think for a long time Alberta has done a very good job. I think we're going to be seeing more coming out of Alberta. In Alberta as well, in terms of supporting hospice care and training for hospices, I would say they are leaders.

Again, it's a patchwork. If you go across the country, some places have enough palliative care units and palliative care specialists to man them and others haven't, so it really is very variable across the country.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Fantastic. Perhaps you could provide us, in writing, with where those centres of excellence are in terms of different aspects and specific jurisdictions, just to help us with formulating our recommendations.

[Dr. José Pereira]

Will do.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Mr. Moat, do you have anything to add?

[Jeffrey Moat]

I was going to say that I think what we'll do, as part of that information, is include some of the work that Pallium is doing with a number of health care systems across the country to develop our country's first national palliative care atlas. This will be an incredible decision-making tool for health care leadership and administrators to identify areas of strength and areas of gaps when it comes to palliative care service delivery.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you.

Very quickly, I know I'm at the end of my time, but I just really want to thank both of you for the work you do with palliative care. It's so very important, and not enough is done in that space. Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mrs. Goodridge.

As per the agreement of the committee, that completes the time we have for questions. We had asked you for an hour. You waited for an hour and then you gave us an hour, and we'd like to have a whole lot more, so you may be hearing from some of the members in writing.

Thank you very much for being with us, and thanks for your patience. It will be of great assistance to us.

Colleagues, before we adjourn, I will ask you to please send us some more names of witnesses for meetings on the COVID study, because we're running low on those.

With that, given that the bells are ringing, we are adjourned. Thank you very much, everyone.