Yes. There was an instance when Health Canada presented its plan for regulations on embryo transfer, and the board expressed serious concerns about their plan. And at this time there was board consensus favouring a more restrictive policy that was more in step with current science and evidence. Board members suggested a strategic response to this, including providing advice to the minister, which the legislation clearly allows for in the board's mandate in section 30.
There was reluctance on the part of the president and the chair to take that step. Instead of doing that with the regulation, the board's energy was directed to develop a policy as to when the board could give advice to the minister. For reasons that are not clear, it took nearly 10 months to draft a relatively simple and straightforward policy on when the board could or should give advice to the minister--without any decision ever being made on whether advice should be given to the minister in that instance. Given the board's mandate, which includes providing advice to the minister, there should have been at least a draft policy in place from the very beginning.
So that was a really good example. And we had board consensus on this. It wasn't just a few people; the whole board agreed.