Certainly. On the first point, we'll be circulating, through the chair and the clerk, our technical brief next week.
We're not ideologically predisposed to a mandatory voluntary route. If it were a voluntary method that would deliver performance, then we would be behind that. My concern is that the voluntary approach is simply completely unworkable and that a bunch of sophisticated public servants and politicians will sit around for two or three years to prove that to everybody.
The sodium working group report made some carefully considered recommendations in July 2010, and we haven't really heard an answer to that from the Minister of Health yet. I remained hopeful, even as late as November last year, when the ministers were meeting.
My sense is that the group that was tasked by the ministers and deputy ministers to prepare this plan B were so desirous of getting the support of the federal Minister of Health that they stripped out almost all of the references to regulations and then provided it to the minister. She still said no.
I remember telling colleagues on the sodium working group that the first sign we would get that the voluntary approach isn't working is when companies refuse to provide information on their progress. It seems that's exactly what has happened; I just didn't think it would take so long. The minister said she didn't want to proceed with the plan because she didn't want to post the results online. That's problematic.