Health committee  This is Dr. Jeff Farber's area, so I think he would be best placed to give you a precise answer.

Health committee  Thank you for the questions. I would like to ask Dr. Godefroy to answer.

Health committee  I would just like to say that Ms. Weatherill also called for coordination among the federal members. As Dr. Butler-Jones has stated, there is a deputy minister committee, and we have an ADM committee that meets regularly to support Dr. Butler-Jones. The bottom line is that Heal

Health committee  It's a Government of Canada progress report.

Health committee  I'll invite Dr. Godefroy to answer that question.

Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Honourable members, I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you today about Health Canada's efforts. Before getting into my remarks, I'd like to introduce Dr. Samuel Godefroy, who is our director general of the foods directo

Health committee  Madam Chair, if I may, I think it is Dr. Butler-Jones who is going to be leading off the presentation. Is that okay? That's what we had planned on.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, absolutely. Again, it's the medical community who will decide, based on the needs of patients. They're already targeting the available supply of technetium to the emergency cases. If, in certain cases, delayed diagnosis means delayed treatment—

Natural Resources committee  Yes, absolutely. This does not affect radiation therapy for cancer. Radiation therapy does not rely on moly or Tc-99m. That's cobalt, so it's not coming from the NRU. There's no shortage of radiation therapy for cancer treatment at all.

Natural Resources committee  There are other isotopes, but they use different cameras. For example, for the SPECT cameras or gamma cameras, which use the technetium, the alternative is thallium, which can use the same camera for cardiac scanning. You can also use iodine-123 to image kidneys. It has a half li

Natural Resources committee  Mr. Chair, just to reinforce what my colleague has said, one of the biggest lessons learned was to have early communication and notification—this is what we heard from our medical community and from the provinces and territories—so that they could plan ahead and know how long to

Natural Resources committee  Mr. Chair, our minister has been talking every week to her provincial and territorial counterparts. We're facilitating access to these alternatives; we're working with the medical community to have these available to them as soon as they need them. Since 2007, one of the other

Natural Resources committee  I'd be happy to, Mr. Chair. Thallium, as I said, in the cardiovascular heart scans make up about 50% of Tc-99m use. The medical community and the provinces and territories, as part of their contingency planning, have agreed that thallium can be a viable source for most of that 5

Natural Resources committee  None. Thallium does not do anything for cancer; it's only for heart disease. But there are other isotopes, such as sodium fluoride for bone scanning, to see how the cancer tumour has grown and if it's spread to the bone.

Natural Resources committee  Right now, thallium is available—