Thank you, Madam Chairperson.
Thanks to all of you for being here.
I want to start by saying, with all due respect, that we as members of Parliament don't need, I think, detailed information about the harms of high sodium levels. We've been informed of them for some time and we had a fairly good discussion about it with the working group.
That meeting came about because in fact through the media we learned that this working group was hidden away somewhere in some basement, plodding along and not accomplishing anything. We're all here today with one purpose in mind, and that is to figure out when you're going to start with a plan of action that actually means something.
Why has this been kept in the dark for so long? Why now...? At the end of the last meeting we thought, good; at least they have a target: it's going to be 2,300. Now you're telling us 2,300 by the year 2016. My goodness! It is appalling that there isn't more of a strategy coming forward at this point.
I think the Globe and Mail said it all in the editorial on September 15:
With health care costs ever-climbing, governments have an extra incentive to do everything possible to prevent disease. Ottawa's leisurely approach to salt overuse is baffling.
That's a mild way of putting, I think, the concerns today.
Kim, you're a part of the Public Health Agency. I thought your job would be to push and prod Health Canada to come up with something. Since 2007 we've had a working group, and now, in 2009, two years after it got started, you're telling us that in 2010 we might kickstart a strategy that might get us to the upper levels by 2016. Canadians are far more advanced than you are, than this government is. They expect some leadership.
I guess my question, at least today, is: why can't you at least begin a major public education campaign? Canadians know the dangers of salt. We know that heart attack, high blood pressure, heart disease are directly related to excessive levels of sodium in salt. We know that it's costing our system $2 billion a year. And Canadians are prepared to do something. In fact, as you both noted, it's not at the home that the problem exists; it's in manufactured foods and in restaurant foods.
So why isn't there a public campaign to alert Canadians, not with more information about what happens, but how to do it, what to do, what you should be eating? Why isn't there some kind of voluntary program such as Britain has? Why didn't you, in 2007—