Thank you, Senator Mégie.
Yes, a lot of thought has been put into that.
On that note, I would say that the problem of information about access to palliative care goes back a long way. It also comes from the fear of talking about death, of talking about topics that are not easy.
I think the shortcut to medical assistance in dying was taken not because it was necessarily easier to talk about it, in terms of public information, but because it was something new for the press and the media. There was something new to put out there, whereas when you want to talk about palliative care, you have all the problems of what you are going to say, who you are going to say it to, and how you are going to say it.
On the public side, we really need some very targeted, but also well-organized, press campaign elements to explain to people what palliative care is.
I noticed in my long experience in palliative care that the best ambassadors to talk about it well are the families and loved ones of people who have received it. They are the best people to do it. They can say that their mother or aunt received palliative care, that it was a positive experience, and that this person received care, comfort, and relief.
On the physician side, Dr. Pereira talked about this. Medical schools are getting into it, but they definitely need to continue to [technical difficulties]. Obviously, all of this fits into an increasingly heavy curriculum in medicine where it is difficult to tell future medical students that they are going to have to add one or two years of study to successfully cover everything. We need to successfully condense everything even more.
Obviously, our medical students need to be confronted with the fact that everyone is going to die someday, but they also need to be exposed to palliative care during their training.