Thank you for the question.
We have two offices. Vancouver is our head office, as determined by Governor in Council, and we have staff here in Ottawa as well. The staff in Ottawa are here because, as regulations are being developed by Health Canada, there is a need to work constantly with Health Canada to ensure that the regulations take into account any possible challenges around their implementation.
As regulations are being developed--for example, in the licensing of clinics area--we also have to develop the internal systems to be able to immediately start to receive applications from the field and issue licences as quickly as possible once the regulations are passed. One of the key activities in the last year and a half has been starting to build that system capacity, so the day the regulations are passed by the government we will have the application form for clinics to start to apply for their licences on our website
In the period leading up to the licensing activities, we have several other responsibilities in the area of outreach. In any regulatory program, the ability to reach out in the field to the parties that are going to be regulated is vital. You need their cooperation in order to regulate and ensure that people follow the rules and report as asked by the government.
So we have done considerable outreach with the medical and scientific community, as well as the patient community. The patient community needs to understand why the act was put in place and how it protects their health and safety. It's not there to get in the way of them being able to have families; it's there to protect their health and safety as they choose to use technologies to do so.
The third major area is producing information for the field. We've started on a major information exchange program. It is reaching patients and professionals, and hopefully it will soon start reaching younger people. We know that the age of pregnancy is increasing in this country, and obesity and STIs are continuing to increase, so there really is a need to educate younger people, prior to them even considering that they might wish to be parents, about some of the challenges in this area.
Those are some of the activities we've been doing.