Government Operations committee  The web promotion is about $60,000 a year.

Government Operations committee  Survival suits for emergencies—

Government Operations committee  On the food standards, we're often asked by either Health Canada, or as in the case of aquaculture, Fisheries and Oceans, to develop a standard by which they can then assure that facilities are run to the standard that was agreed to. The inputs that come into that are health imp

Government Operations committee  The nature of this body is consensus-based. Consensus does not mean agreement. Essentially, what we do first of all is to ensure there's a balance of interests. So there are a number of things that we expect the committee to provide. First of all, everybody who participates has

Government Operations committee  It really defines our role within government. Fundamentally, the private sector, and I should be clear that this is mostly not-for-profits, but the standards organizations out there are well-developed. They're well recognized and they can take up most of the interests of industry

Government Operations committee  Right, but when we're receiving the quotes, we're expecting them to be based on the standards we use, for instance, in real properties and on using materials that have been certified, whether they are asked for glass or for CSA-certified electrical or those kinds of things. Their

Government Operations committee  I'm, of course, able to speak to that. The most significant one had to do with moving to full cost recovery. We are now at about 80% to 90% of full cost recovery. We'll likely not achieve full cost recovery, because part of what the standards board does is help me in my other ro

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, let me speak first on how we provide some assurance that the standards organizations are doing work that's fair and balanced and considers all points of view. The Standards Council of Canada has an oversight role on all standards organizations. They accredit our proc

Government Operations committee  There are provisions in the trade agreement to adapt to specific requirements of each of the host countries. On the specifics, I'd have to look at that one in particular, but obviously radon gas is not an issue. You have to look at each case where you're restricting because essen

Government Operations committee  Obviously there are those who may not want to have a standard in place for their products. The idea is to make sure that you're focusing your standard on limitations that are real such as health and safety, those kinds of things. One of the important things that we believe stand

Government Operations committee  I think I'm going to have to get back to you on that. That's a very technical little question, but if I can find it in the next few minutes....

Government Operations committee  I will send you the details. There are some very specific distinctions when it comes to this terminology.

Government Operations committee  This is the same—maybe I'm going a little bit back to what Des was talking about earlier. One of the roles that CGSB is often called to play is to ensure that there is an alignment between standards between different countries, to facilitate trade so that Canadian suppliers are a

Government Operations committee  Absolutely. It's precisely that. It's a difficult problem. How do you bring everybody together to the table? It's a recognized issue. It's just that no one knows how to solve it, so what the standards organization is doing is trying to bring everyone together to do that.

Government Operations committee  First of all, we do not do enforcement. I'll take the example of building codes. We provide a number of standards that are used in the National Building Code, which is hosted by the National Research Council—the actual building code—and the provinces and municipalities use that a