Health committee  What screening does is it diagnoses cancers earlier. Screen-detected cancers are often only four millimetres wide. They're cancers that are detected before you can feel them. Smaller cancers, by definition, are at an earlier stage. Earlier-stage cancers, by definition, have better outcomes and less-intensive treatments.

Health committee  Our task force has been looked at as the gold standard. Why is it the gold standard if experts don't agree with the guidelines? Why is it the gold standard if provinces are doing their own thing and not doing what the guidelines are saying? The reach of the task force and their guidelines is very broad and hits many points of women's health.

Health committee  Paula, maybe you'd like to go?

Health committee  The U.S. assumed a benefit of screening, so they did not review evidence before 2016. They moved on. They found no new randomized control trials, much like we spoke to. These trials were all or primarily done a long time ago. They assumed benefit and they had to look at other things.

Health committee  It's really simple. A mammogram is where we start. With screening, a mammogram is an X-ray of the breast. What I and many other experts believe is that screening should start at age 40. Women in their forties should probably have annual mammograms, and then that should continue every two years.

Health committee  What you're referring to are the inequities that we are seeing. These inequities are driven by these guidelines. The inequities that are created by the task force guidelines happen on so many levels. They happen on a provincial level because they create differences in provinces.

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to this committee for your important work, especially today, on the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. Very few people see the impact of breast cancer screening guidelines the way I do. I am a family doctor. I train future family doctors, and I am a GP oncologist, working on the cancer wards caring for patients who are too sick to be at home.