Thank you for being here today and for shedding light on what are certainly some of these very complicated changes in this area. Given that Canada has signed some 40 free trade agreements, obviously, keeping a set of Canadian standards is crucial. We're very proud of our Canadian standards, of course, both internally and internationally.
I am a newcomer to this committee, and I was surprised as I was reading about the complexities and the fact that there are now eight different bodies. What is this proliferation, and what does it mean in terms of efficiencies and effectiveness for the Canadian government and in terms of your role?
I have a couple of questions on some of the background documents.
In 2009, after an evaluation of CGSB, you abandoned 700 standards that had become obsolete. Then, in May 2015, as we heard earlier, a representative from SCC confirmed to the committee that more than half of the standards in the catalogue were out of date.
Of course, we want to maintain Canadian standards. There are eight different organizations now developing standards that people and businesses can go to in Canada. There are a lot of questions around harmonization, internal coordination, and simplification with regard to the provinces and internal trade, as well as around meeting international standards.
We can get into the weeds and talk about how standards are developed or not, but obviously there are eight different organizations doing that, and they're doing it very well.
What is the government's role in this? What is your department's role in this? What could it be or should it be, given the modern world, and how standards are changing very, very quickly? Are you in a situation where you feel that you can play a leadership role, a coordinating role, a referring role, or a monitoring role with regard to these other agencies?
Perhaps your role needs to change. Instead of helping to develop standards, which obviously these other agencies, which we heard from directly today, are doing more efficiently and more cost-effectively, perhaps Canada needs to reconsider its role in terms of what we do in this area.