Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses for being here.
I'd like to start my questioning with Ms. Mitchell regarding some of the suggested amendments she made. Thank you very much for your thorough work on this. It's an issue of great concern to me too.
First, there is a difference between something the Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods had put forward and something you had put forward on animal testing. I was wondering about the issue of removing or including “refine” in the legislation. I'm asking about this because I know you'd like to have this removed and just put in “replace ” or “reduce”, but there are still certain tests for which there are no alternatives to animal testing. In the interim, when these still have to be unfortunately put forward through animal testing, do you not feel that having that “refine” part in there would help with the animal welfare issue during these tests?