Thank you for the member's question.
It is absolutely correct that, increasingly, Canadians are turning to alternatives like traditional Chinese medicine. There are a number of steps the department is taking. First and foremost among them is that, under the leadership of the minister and others, an advisory committee provides advice to the department on an ongoing basis with respect to the regulation of traditional Chinese medicines, the challenges the community has faced in terms of bringing these products into the country, the practice of traditional Chinese medicine, some of the issues related to that, claims around the products, and all of those sorts of things.
We've been working closely with the Chinese government. It has been very generous in providing traditional pharmacopoeias about the different herbs and substances, and how they have traditionally been used in China, to make sure that practitioners making claims about those herbs are in line with their historic use and use patterns so there is an alignment between what is happening in this country, where these herbs come from—the medicines—and how they have long been used. Those are some examples of the range of things we are doing to work closely with that community to make sure that they understand their obligations when bringing these medicines and herbs into the country. We have a quick and efficient way to understand what it is they're proposing and see if that aligns with the traditional uses from their origins.