I absolutely think we do need to continue to redouble our efforts to improve the quantity and quality of palliative care that Canadians receive. As a rule, most Canadians can and should be getting palliative care approaches integrated earlier than they currently are. I think it's important, though, to distinguish this from the MAID question. There really isn't any indication that this is what's driving MAID on any level. When palliative care is involved, it's often involved for quite a substantial amount of time before MAID requests go in and before MAID is provided.
I just want to correct the misconception that this study data comes from only self-reported surveys, which I think Mr. Barrett had asked about before. That's not true. We did a study in Ontario. In Ontario, every single case is reviewed by a nurse investigator working for the office of the chief coroner. Obviously, these are people with no skin in the game who would stand to lose or gain nothing from any of their assessments. Their assessments concurred almost exactly with the same numbers in terms of the involvement of palliative care duration. I think that's really important to state. MAID is provided to maybe 2% or 3% of the population as they die.
The importance of palliative care, social services and improving all of those things that we do for Canada's most vulnerable and Canada's dying are vitally important, because it applies to 97% of the population, the part that doesn't get MAID. I've gone two or three years now without doing a single MAID case. I'm a palliative care physician. Since moving to Ottawa I haven't done it. There's a lot more palliative care to be done out there than there is MAID. That's really where the emphasis should be. I don't think you want to mix and confuse these two.
It's also important to state that the shared pool of resources is a misconception. In Ontario, certainly, there isn't a shared pool of dedicated palliative care resources. It's a physician services budget, one where anyone could bill any amount of codes. It doesn't come at the expense of palliative care. Where there are nurses....
Sorry. I'll stop there. Thank you.