Through the chair, yes, I'd be happy to speak about that.
There were several challenges that we faced across the country with regard to data, and I'll speak first about data regarding our health care workforce. We lack a standardized national database of health care workers in this country with specifics on what they are qualified to do, where are they working and what their area of expertise is.
If we're going to have a pan-Canadian workforce strategy, we need to begin with the basics of knowing who's doing what, where and when, and under what circumstances, to build forward.
The second has to do with the lack of consistent health data collection. We know that across jurisdictions in Canada, health data is collected in varying forms, and for that reason it is challenging to share across jurisdictions. If we are going to be prepared, moving forward, for the next pandemic or next health crisis, then I think it behooves us to actually have a database that we can access to know who's doing what and where in our workforce, as I said, and to have an understanding of where the gaps in our system are and where we are able to implement strategies to improve health care.
If I were to look backwards in time—and sorry, I don't want to take too much of your six minutes—there are definitely some public health lessons that we learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, which had to do with funding of our public health teams and organizations, defining our increasing awareness of our public health physicians and public health practices and service delivery.
Certainly it is critical, in managing our health care system, that we prioritize a sustainable investment in staffing capacity, acknowledge and address the significant burnout among health care workers in public health, and invest in and develop public health information systems. Decision-making, prioritizing community engagement, focusing on improving health promotion and prevention, and modernizing communications and training and strategies, all of these require a solid foundation in data and shared data.