Thank you very much.
When Bill C-54 first came, and then Bill C-11 afterwards, it was like an atomic bomb in the research community. We were not prepared for it. The way we read the law--and I even read the document explaining the law--it was appalling to the people in the community who had been following the guidelines for those 15 years.
At level 4, there's one big lab in Winnipeg. At level 3, there are 120 labs, but most of those level 3 labs are not dealing with biothreats. Yes, there is HIV, and a couple of them deal with TB. The labs that have to work with anthrax are mostly military labs. I know Burkholderia pseudomallei is being worked with in Calgary, and possibly they have special arrangements there.
When I came the first time....
The regulations governing the import of pathogens are already very, very substantial. We do not know what the process of communication will be between the people on the ground and those who will be making the regulations. It is certain that level 2 will be different from levels 3 and 4, but that is not how the bill is written.
I understood very well when you said, “Well, gee, if I was in your place I would not like to have regulations within the law”. This is not our field of expertise, and for us, when we read that, it looks pretty dangerous for the research we are doing, in the sense that we will overburden already overburdened people. Now with the regulations, I'm not aware of how the process will work, or whether it will come back to this chamber, or whether there will be communication. It's a chèque en blanc that they're asking for. You want something more from the Public Health Agency of Canada than a chèque en blanc.