At Health Canada we've traditionally used mass media--TV, radio, and print--to reach our target audiences, and those campaigns have been very effective.
Now we're looking at a whole new world with Web 2.0, where we see that 17.5 million Canadians are current users of Facebook and 21 million Canadians a month are going on YouTube to see online videos. That kind of reach in engagement is phenomenal, and I think it has really expanded the tools we have available to reach Canadians.
As Paul mentioned, at Health Canada we're already using some of those tools in our anti-drug campaign, for example, aimed at youth 13 to 15. We have a Facebook page that has over 22,000 fans. There are ways that youth can give us their own testimonials and other youth can watch them. Those are exciting new things we've been doing that have been showing success.
Last week the minister launched our children's health and safety campaign aimed at giving parents health and safety information. We're really excited by some of the new technology we've been using there. For the first time ever we have QR codes in our print and brochure material. In addition to Facebook, we've launched our first widget and our first mobile application, so now people can have all of our recalls and advisories at hand. So that's quite exciting.
We've developed an electronic handbook that parents can tailor to the needs of their own families and children. So if a parent is worried about bullying, nutrition, obesity, or food allergies, they can tailor this handbook to their own needs.