Thank you very much, Chair.
I don't think it's been touched on yet, which quite surprised me, but I want to move to chapter 8, dealing with allocating funds to regulatory programs, although I have to say, and I think Mr. Fitzpatrick raised it, I wasn't expecting it from that angle. I don't want to misquote him, but I do believe, Chair, he was making reference and thanking you for raising it, because it was somehow feeding into the argument that there are too many regulations.
Anyway, I'll take a very different tack, probably a little more consistent with where I think you were going, which is that we have these important regulations--well, sometimes you need laws--and these are the words of the Auditor General, “in an area so critically important to Hamiltonians”, certainly Hamiltonians and Canadians. So I want to move straight to it. I want to move to the product safety program, because this really blows me away.
If we take a look at the chart you've provided on page 9 in chapter 8, it points out where there is “Insufficient level of activity”, and in everywhere except “Not applicable” or “Not raised as a concern”, it's insufficient. What are we talking about here? As I'm understanding this, the public safety program is the actual part of Health Canada's mandate to ensure that products, up to and including medical devices like pacemakers and hearing aids, things we put inside our bodies, products we buy for our kids, cribs, strollers, things of that ilk...this is the department that ensures they're safe for the public. Public safety is more than police, jail terms, and fighting terrorism. Public safety is also making sure that products people buy, particularly those they ingest as medicine, are safe for them. I mean, that's public safety.
Here we have a report, a devastating report. Really, I'm shocked that the media haven't picked up on this more, because it is a public safety issue. It's rife through this whole report that there's not enough money. Not only is there not enough money going into the protection of these things, but it was the managers themselves who pointed out, after they reviewed the work they were expected to do, that they didn't have the funding to cover those activities.
Nothing here is satisfactory. I ask colleagues to look at the charts. Nothing is satisfactory in every area.
I'm looking at this, and I'm looking at things such as are on page 11, where it's talking about core funding for product safety, for the drug products program, and medical devices. The core funding has been reduced over the years by, I believe...well, take a look at the numbers. Under product safety, it was $8.1 million in 2003-04, and now it's $7.3 million; for drug products programs, $7.1 million, down to $4.8 million; core funding in the medical devices program, $2 million, and now it's half of that at $1 million.
If I'm understanding the chart on page 10, for instance, let's go to this: “Compliance and enforcement activities, Conducting inspections of manufacturers of drug ingredients”--that's prescription drugs. That's to check to see what ingredients they're using in the production of prescription medicine that we all get from our pharmacies. This is telling me that there is insufficient activity from Health Canada to meet the needs that Canadians have to inspect the contents of these prescription drugs. Is that correct? Is it that black and white?