Health committee  Honourable members, first of all I would like to mention I do not have a PhD; I am not a doctor. My name is Ayoob Ghalami. I am the senior biosafety officer for the University of Toronto, speaking as an individual today. Thank you for the opportunity to come and talk on Bill C-

Health committee  We have been consulted. I think it was in late 2007 that they initially came. Unfortunately, I haven't prepared time schedules and I don't remember. We were also consulted last year and they also came this year. We had three sessions. There was a public session that U of T hosted

Health committee  At the same time, I think it's extremely important that you put it for risk group three, because doing nothing is not a choice.

Health committee  It's totally different. I'll give you other examples. Any restaurant gets inspected by the Ministry of Labour because it's a workplace. At the same time, you get health inspectors checking on food quality. I think the Public Health Agency is the ultimate authority, but nowadays

Health committee  Absolutely, because now we have two standards. I have a level three lab that is certified. I won't mention the university, but there was a university that wanted some of my HIV samples, but they didn't have a certified lab. And they're more than welcome to run an uncertified lab,

Health committee  Yes. What I can say is that the University of Toronto is a public institution. We have signed a memorandum of understanding with the tri-council that gives us funding. All the funds are conditional on the fact that we have to abide by the third edition of the guideline that the P

Health committee  I can't speak on behalf of other people. I wouldn't know what their concerns are. I have talked; I get calls from other institutions asking why and when we started our post-exposure prophylaxis in our medical surveillance program. I can guarantee you that half of our institution

Health committee  You mention a great point. When George Bush came into power and they didn't want stem cell research, we got lots of scientists. It was their loss, our gain. We got lots of scientists from the States who couldn't do research there and they came to Canada, exactly. If we have such

Health committee  Absolutely. Change is always hard. One major concern that scientists especially have is the jail term, that if you do something wrong you go to a jail, with a car thief. But I guess this is the only way that bill could be introduced. There are concerns, and the reality is that th

Health committee  This is my third year.

Health committee  I said I would be terrified if I were the Public Health Agency of Canada and having the authority without knowing what I am responsible for. It was nothing to do with or relevant to my work. If the University of Toronto had hired me as a biosafety officer without telling me what

Health committee  There's a category four for that.

Health committee  There is a key point that needs to be addressed. That comes with the concentration. When you go to the grocery store and you deal with chicken, with the cold temperature you will not have as much as E. coli as you will when you have a culture in which you cultivate that E. coli a

Health committee  If you go back to my comments, I did mention specifically that I do not like the schedules. I think the schedules should be supervised. This is an extremely fluid industry. Biosafety changes all the time. When I worked in research, the promoter was 25 base pairs. They changed it

Health committee  Honourable member, again, I go back to the comment I made. I said that I will live with this bill if the security clearance has been lifted for risk group two organisms. I addressed that concern earlier.