Health committee  We need to have the standards clearly defined. Even at Accreditation Canada right now, they're creating standards for looking at palliative care within facilities, and even within facilities, you must have a 10-bed-plus unit before they start to look at some of those standards. I

Health committee  That's right, national care standards.

Health committee  Yes, exactly.

Health committee  Thank you.

Health committee  Thank you very much. I'd like to make one comment, which I'd like to offer to this committee. Palliative care is a complex entity, as I'm sure you're gathering. It crosses hospital acute care, community and long-term care, homeless people everywhere, rural and urban.... It's so

Health committee  Yes, and we've submitted our document. We have really one change.

Health committee  Actually, the one change was take out “develop” and move straight to implementation because so much has been—

Health committee  In our submission to this committee, the only recommended amendment would be to delete the words “develop and” from subclause 2(1) and just have “implement a framework designed”.

Health committee  Going back through the years, there was the former secretariat, and there was Sharon Carstairs who served. There was so much work done much prior to MAID that was outlining the need for palliative care. The reality is that those of us working in palliative care knew for years t

Health committee  Actually, we just got the green light to go ahead and do a refresh of the EFPPEC, educating future physicians. I think Sharon Baxter mentioned it today. The core competencies were developed, I think in 2004 or 2005, and the problem was getting those core competencies integrated

Health committee  We need the leadership and somebody holding the rudder of the ship, so with Bill C-277, it's having a secretariat, starting to form a work group. We can have that oversight to start to put in the standards, to make sure the indicators and so on are in place so that we can gather

Health committee  Absolutely correct.

Health committee  In Canada? No, I can't tell you that. A lot of places choose not to have a wait-list. They'll keep trying to see people just as quickly as they can, which means the caseload for their staff ends up becoming kind of monumental. Even within Nova Scotia, there are caseloads where, b

Health committee  We've been up close to a two-month wait-list—

Health committee  —when the average life expectancy is about six months.