Thank you for the question, Madam Chair.
There's a really significant problem with the data that's being collected by Health Canada, which was reported by Ms. Hoffman. I did listen to her testimony and I'm very aware of the Health Canada reports. Those rely completely on self-reporting by MAID providers, and there is no ability right now in Canada to measure the quality or quantity of palliative care that is being provided or to know who is providing it. We do not have any standards or ability to collect data nationally, as we can for MAID statistics. Unfortunately there is no ability to make those conclusions.
We know that clinicians have a large misunderstanding about palliative care and don't understand how it can make such a difference in someone's life early on to prevent getting to the point of irremediable suffering. How palliative care is explained to patients when they request MAID is only as good as the person who is giving the explanation. We know that patients often get wrong information and have a very limited understanding.
I think one of the biggest problems is that if you're only hearing about palliative care when you get to the point where you're asking for death, then we have a big problem, because we failed upstream to treat the problem in the first place. That's the part that we need to focus on.
There is so much suffering that's not being alleviated because palliative care is not readily available to patients when they need it, when they start having symptoms and suffering because of serious illness. It needs to be integrated early into chronic illness, and right now, in our very best data, which is subjective reporting by MAID providers who may not understand what's involved in palliative care, we're seeing 35% of people have palliative care maybe within two weeks of their request, which is probably much too late, or maybe receiving none at all. Even four weeks prior to the request, I would say, is inadequate to prevent irremediable suffering.