Mr. Chair, with regard to the blood system, I'm sure the various members of the committee know that Health Canada is the regulator and reviews applications from the blood operators when there's a desire to make a change. This was the system set up following the Krever commission. It's up to Héma-Québec and Canadian Blood Services to come forward with a proposal.
They have come forward actually within the last week with a proposal to reduce the deferral period involving the issue of MSM from five years to one year. We are now in the process of actually reviewing the submission. There's a lot of detailed statistical data, a review of the international experience of other jurisdictions, and so on. Obviously, we want to give it a careful review. The objective will be to ensure that any changes to the blood system maintain the same level of safety. We anticipate that review will be finished over the summer and that we will be in a position to provide a regulatory authorization by no later than September.
That's the current status. If that's successful, it would reduce the deferral period significantly to one year.