Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I want to thank my colleague Patrick for introducing this very important bill and I thank all of the witnesses who have come here today.
By introducing this bill, you have already accomplished much, I believe, by raising the awareness of this issue around this table as well as in the House of Commons.
I am from Saskatchewan, and I recently turned 50 years old. So in the past three months I received a letter from the breast screening program in our province telling me to make an appointment to come in and start that process. Due to the death of my mother to cancer about 15, 16 years ago, I did have a mammogram a number of years ago. I had the mammogram done, was basically told everything was okay, and never was really given any more information.
I was one of the speakers, as the member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, who debated this issue in the House. As I said, it's raised awareness for many of us that this is an important bill to get passed in the House.
I do want to address the fact that speculation has been made that the federal government needs to go further than this bill. I would just say that this is a first step, an important step. If it creates an opportunity for more dialogue and for us to begin to look at different ways to go further, I think that's something we need to focus on.
I also want to comment again on the federal-provincial-territorial national committee for the Canadian breast cancer screening initiative. I know my colleague mentioned that they are encouraged to share best practices on raising awareness of dense breast tissue. I'm wondering, Mr. Brown, if you could go a little bit further about that initiative, in terms of what our federal government is doing to encourage those conversations.