Certainly that exact information was provided to us as part of the ad hoc working group, in terms of the fact that they could ramp up, but we would be looking at about a 10% to 15% increase and it would not fill the entire capacity, and also it would not be available to Canadians until the end of December. So all of that information was provided to us.
We then, again, looked at the impact that would have on health care, and as we said, we were looking at about 10% of the examinations that we currently do where an immediate answer is required. Without that immediate answer, there may be jeopardy in terms of the person's health or delivery of care, an increased risk in terms of the delivery of care, and another 40% of individuals for whom there would have been a significant impact with an increase in suffering as a result of not being able to access care.
It's always very hard. I have two credentials. I am a general internist and I'm also a nuclear medicine specialist. Up until five years ago, when I left Ottawa, I looked after patients directly. It's always very difficult to connect a diagnostic test or the absence of a diagnostic test with what the eventual outcome is in terms of the patient, because what you're dealing with is narrowing the diagnostic probabilities and trying to improve the outcome for the patient.
The question that we've been asked by the press and by a lot of other people is this. Would people have died? It's a very difficult question to answer. Would people's care have been impacted? Absolutely. Yes. Would the health system have been made less sustainable? I believe yes, it would have been, because it would have had backlogs that we were trying to deal with. Could people have died? Yes, they could have under certain circumstances.