Thanks very much.
I notice you were quite proud of the telehealth system in Ontario. I can understand that, because I think it was one of your babies when you were a minister there. This committee had a few babies too that we were very interested in. One of them was the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, and the agency that we anticipate with bated breath—although we may expire before that agency actually gets up and running.
You might be interested to know that we held two sets of consultations with Canadians on this very thorny matter. The stakeholders were vehemently opposed to one another's perspectives. There were two groups. Much to our dismay, after the act passed, officials from your department decided that before developing the regulations, they needed to go out and have consultations, even though they had sat through, in this very room, many of the consultations we had held. That was most annoying to us—as if we did not hear the truth and they had to go out and find out again, and actually reignite the opposition, one to another, of these two groups.
The agency was supposed to be established in January. Of course we didn't really expect it because of the intervening election, but it really is getting ridiculous how long we're waiting for this agency while, in the view of some of the committee members, appalling things are going on out there in the marketplace—commercialization of the very roots of human life, etc.
I'm wondering, is there any way that you can put a firecracker under the department? Or maybe Mr. Rosenberg would like to explain to us why it is the officials assigned to this file cannot seem to deliver this baby.