Human Resources committee  The onus is on the family, obviously, to disclose the proper information to a funeral home concerning who the person is who is legally responsible for the arrangements. We make that a policy within our funeral home. It's not a mandated nationwide application, but a lot of funeral homes subscribe to that.

Human Resources committee  During that period where the—

Human Resources committee  We represent 85% of the deaths in Canada.

Human Resources committee  The association does, yes.

Human Resources committee  There is that factor and then there are people who choose through religious practice in certain cases not to deal with a funeral home and they handle things internally.

Human Resources committee  What we're doing during that time is we've provided the family initially at the service with those statements of death that the funeral home issues. They have the documentation they need to go ahead and settle the person's affairs. As I said, the funeral directors' statements of death are accepted by all the major agencies: banks, insurance companies, Canada pension.

Human Resources committee  Yes, but what will happen is, until the death is registered with vital statistics, if that paper is still at the doctor's office or it has reached vital statistics and they've come in droves and it's taking them a few days to enter that information into their system, you will have the odd case for a family where they'll be dealing with an insurance company or somebody that doesn't recognize...99% of them recognize the funeral director's statement of death but you do run into that odd situation where they want a provincial death certificate which has the same information that the one the funeral home provides has.

Human Resources committee  Policy-wise, I couldn't speak to that because I'm not sure what logistics would be involved on their side. On our side, my take on it is that whatever they decide, if it's going to expedite things and make it easier for families, that would meet my main concern. As for how it goes about arriving at that point, I couldn't really speak to that as far as the logistics go.

Human Resources committee  No, I don't believe we need a different role. It's just that we are the people on the ground who are dealing with these families on a day-to-day basis, and we are the first point of contact for these families. As far as streamlining is concerned, as I said, we would like to partner with you folks with respect to giving our input from our industry side, our experience.

Human Resources committee  Part of the delay.... I'm not trying to put this all on the doctors and say the doctors are negligent in their timely fashion of filling out that paperwork. There are also cases where there has been an autopsy and people are waiting for the toxicological results; they're waiting for the inquest from the pathologist.

Human Resources committee  Of our membership and the people in our industry whom we've talked to about this bill, there are of course no negatives. It's a no-brainer. It seems to be a very great streamlining process for people who look after the executorship of an estate. With the public, they are always looking for direction from us because a lot of these people have never had to be executors before.

Human Resources committee  Quite often we do, unfortunately. What appears to be the case in some estate matters is that the family don't view it as a death benefit that's there to assist in the payment of a funeral, but rather money in the estate that can be used for whatever purposes they see fit. Oftentimes funeral homes advance money to families ahead of time to cover disbursements that they're paying on the family's behalf.

Human Resources committee  In the time that I've been with FSAC, we haven't really had a go-to person beyond our normal lobbying with the government on the different issues that we run into, but the introduction of this bill definitely opened the door to a discussion that was long overdue as far as we're concerned.

Human Resources committee  For sure.

Human Resources committee  I couldn't give you specific figures, but as far as those benefits are concerned, you would have a situation whereby somebody's overpaid. What if that responsible party didn't realize that's where that source of income came from and they spent some of that money? Then you have to recoup that money from the government because it's owed back to you.