I don't have the exact date. It happened after the new administration, Linda Keen, took over from CNSC.
There were two changes that occurred in the arrangements. One was the disbandment of the medical advisory board—the health board, as you would call it. The second change was in the licensing within the nuclear medicine labs. Previously there was a requirement to have a Royal College-certified nuclear medicine specialist identified as the monitoring physician. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission abolished that requirement, and it was left up to the licensee to appoint someone, who might or might not have the expertise in nuclear medicine to be a monitoring physician.
So you had changes at the national level: medical interaction was no longer required, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission isolated itself from medical input. There was also a change at the local level: it was possible to have monitoring physicians at the local nuclear medicine lab who were not Royal College-trained or experienced in nuclear medicine. Most hospitals ignored that stipulation and continued to have Royal College-certified physicians involved. But it creates an atmosphere. We are the experts in the field. We spend years being trained as radiation safety officers and maintaining the health of individual patients, workers, and the public.
Some discussion on this occurred during the new administration at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. I do not have that information in detail. But according to Dr. Albert Driedger, who was involved, it was very testy and there was some concern that the reputations of the nuclear medicine physicians at that committee were actually damaged.