Thank you, Chair.
My apologies to the witnesses for being late. The traffic in Ottawa was more than I anticipated.
I'm a new member of this committee. I used to be on the finance committee.
I read the Auditor General's report which said, “seven years after the renewal of funding”—for the Canadian diabetes strategy—”the Agency still does not have a strategy in place to guide its activities relating to chronic diseases, including diabetes.”
As a practical example, in Brampton East, 86% of our population is associated with a visible minority, which is the second highest visible minority population in all of Canada. There is a huge South Asian population, Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, including my own family. I just got married this summer and all the food had sugar in it, from breakfast to evening. Diabetes is a massive concern in our ethnicities. In my generation, we're much more cognizant of eating healthier, going to the gym and being physical active.
A lot of the testimony focused on prevention, to catch this early on. Why isn't it being caught early on? Is there a correlation with people not doing their annual physicals? Is that why it's not being caught early on? They do blood work every time I have a physical and they check for this stuff. Are people not having their physicals? If we had a concentrated strategy for sending people to the doctor, would that help?
They are broad-based questions, so everyone can answer.