Thank you very much.
I thank all of you for coming.
First, thank you for updating us on the deputy ministers retreat, which I think is a positive step. I think the fact that there will be a national consensus conference on the marketing pieces is progress.
However, I don't think I speak just for myself in saying that the government response was pretty thin gruel in terms of saying anything we didn't already know from the hearings themselves. I think the government's response is supposed to say what you're going to do about the committee's concerns, not what you've already done. I think we have to get out of the habit of the government response to a committee report being just a reiteration of what we already heard at the hearings and a laundry list of things you're dabbling in at the moment. We know about ParticipACTION. We know about the tax credit. We know about these things. We want to know what you are you going to do, based on the concerns raised by the committee, that is different from what we have already heard at the hearings.
In the ongoing quest by this government.... I have to say that when I arrived here 10 years ago, the women's health strategy was a laundry list of what we were dabbling in at the time. It was not a real strategy in terms of what would be done, by when, and how, with targets and methodologies for doing things, whether it was Caesarean section rates or whatever. So here, I have to say, I was pretty disappointed that the response was very much a regurgitation of what we'd already heard.
Things like, we “will have to partner with”, and in terms of setting measurable targets, “Beginning in 2007, progress towards these targets” set for adults “will be reported through”.... Well, it's already the end of 2007, and I don't actually see that happening.
On the social marketing campaign, it's December, and we've not seen anything. On trans fats, we don't have a clue what's holding people up in terms of what it was very clear had to be done, and we're back to the government response being that industry will be “encouraged to voluntarily reduce”.
That's not what we wanted. We wanted to know, because of the real importance in our country of canola oil, whether the fooling around should make it 2% or 3%, because of what is naturally occurring. We wanted to know when we are going to actually have trans fats banned at a realistic rate for our country.
I'm a bit dismayed that there's not anything in here, other than a couple of the things I just talked about, that actually says yes, we'll do the trans fats; yes, we will set some targets; yes, we will respect the direction of this committee in terms of doing new things. What we as a committee may find we have to do is re-table this report and ask for a better response. This is just the same old, same old, and it's disappointing.
I would like to know the things you think you have done since you saw this report that actually show that you've heard the committee and that you're taking this issue seriously. It's not that you weren't taking the issues seriously before, but what have the wishes of Parliament done to catalyze funding, catalyze commitments, or catalyze anything?
Even in terms of research, I guess I'm still very upset about the lack of funding to CIHR and the fact of the difference between investigator-driven research and what it says in our recommendation about ensuring a research focus on quality physical activity. How do we sort out what we really know needs to be done now in this country?
I was pleased to see that the CIHR is doing some research on which interventions work and which don't. I myself would love to see a research project on the frigging food guide as to whether it's ever changed anybody's behaviour in this country. In terms of just redoing the same old, same old, it looks like the same thing that was hanging on my bulletin board when I was in grade 7.
I would like to know what's new, that you're proud of, since this committee tabled this report.