That's a very good question. Thank you, Senator Mégie.
The Collège des médecins du Québec helped us draft the definition. It produced a document I was happy to help write, Medical Care in the Last Days of Life. In the last week of life, patients do not receive palliative care, they receive care for the last seven days of life.
Palliative care is all types of care given to someone with a guarded prognosis, who has an incurable terminal illness and is in agony. Take, for example, a heart failure patient. I challenge even the top cardiologists to determine the day and time of death of a patient with an enlarged heart. Death can come the next day or eight months after their checkup. These patients choke regularly. They need opiates to relieve their shortness of breath. That's what palliative care is. It's care often given in conjunction with acute care. Palliative care should not be seen as something that blocks and prevents acute medical care. I can give my heart failure patient diuretics to get rid of excess water, but also morphine to relieve their shortness of breath. So palliative care is provided over a long period of time, months, but rarely years. In the Western world, people rarely die of pneumonia. We die of chronic terminal illness.