Health committee  I would finish with something you've already heard so far with this group. It's really important to remember that children are not little adults. They are our future. The decisions that we're making are going to affect them for generations. That's where we are coming from.

Health committee  I think there's a particular issue around pediatric care that perhaps isn't recognized. Particularly with pediatric surgeons, we recruit people from all over the world, because the number of specialists in, for example, pediatric cardiac surgery or pediatric orthopaedic surgery,

Health committee  That's a really important question. In fact, the technology that's used in health care has a cost increase that's well above the annual rate of inflation, so the technology costs typically increase on the order of 5% to 10% per year. It's something that we really struggle with in

Health committee  Yes, we rely quite heavily on philanthropy and, fortunately, Canadians are amazing in the way they step up and see that children's health care is extremely important. They seem very willing to help support us, but we still struggle to stay abreast, particularly for the very expen

Health committee  There's been a lot of discussion today about money and outcomes and how we compare to other developed health care systems. I think that it's not the only solution. The issue of efficiency has been brought up today, and it's obviously extraordinarily important. I can assure you t

Health committee  I think the most important thing is to see children's health care as a very top priority, and I'm not sure that's universally accepted, so I think that's the first thing. The second thing, I think, is encouraging investment in regional approaches in terms of how health care is d

Health committee  This is above my pay grade. I would defer to our CEO, or Dr. Munter here.

Health committee  It's a really good question. I think the issue with the backlog is that we think this is a temporary problem that we can get beyond, assuming that we can get the health human resources that we need. But how do we hire into something that's going to last two or three years before

Health committee  I think what you're asking is actually an extremely complicated question. I don't think there's an easy answer here. I do think that the health care leaders, such as you have here today, and the health care physicians and nurses are the best ones to try to prioritize what is rea

Health committee  You're absolutely right. There have always been backlogs in the health care system for both adults and pediatrics that go back for decades, and in most pediatric centres, around 20% or 30% of the patients were beyond their recommended treatment. The pandemic had a major hit on th

Health committee  Pediatric dental care is a high volume at SickKids, but we tend to see only the most complicated patients who require specific care. Much more dental surgery is actually done in the community, so I think we see a small subset of those patients. We couldn't agree with you more th

Health committee  I think that one key way technology can help us is by implementing systems that accurately reflect the number of patients on waiting lists throughout a region, for example, in the greater Toronto area. We've had several endeavours that have been funded by the province in terms o

Health committee  Thank you very much. Good morning ladies and gentleman. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak here today. I am a pediatric neurosurgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children. I am surgeon in chief there and also chair of the Pediatric Surgical Chiefs of Canada. I'm extr