Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
I'm thinking back to my days back in Alberta in provincial politics when I served as the aboriginal relations minister and dealt a lot with Alberta's dental hygienists association in trying to expand their scope of practice. Initially, for any type of work they did, they required a dentist to be on site, either supervising their work or being on the same site somewhere in case something occurred where a dentist was required. We were able to change that through a lot of work within government to expand their scope of practice so they could provide preventative services, such as scaling, fluoride treatment, or sealants, without the assistance of a dentist or a dentist on site. This enabled them to be mobile and to go out to the communities and do their preventative maintenance work without having a dentist with them.
With regard to Health Canada and their policy, where are they with implementing these health services? Do they require a dentist to be on site? What's their scope for the hygienists out there?