At the same time as the committee is dealing with this process, the government is fast at work putting in place draft legislation to revamp the entire the Food and Drugs Act. In fact, at a briefing on January 24, just a couple of days ago, Ms. Ballantyne actually said that the government is pushing this through as quickly as possible.
One of the premises of that legislation, as you presented it at that briefing and as we've seen in previous attempts, is to remove the legal basis that now underlies the Food and Drugs Act, which is now a criminal law, whereby the Government of Canada has the absolute obligation to ensure that drugs and food and water and products that are on the market are safe beyond a reasonable doubt.
I'm wondering if you could tell us your timeline so we could fit that into our work. Secondly, could you give us a draft of that legislation--you obviously have one now--or some framework we could look at, so we'll know as you're proceeding with this what's on your agenda and how we can fit that into our work? We assume that is something that will be considered by the government and not used as wrapping paper.