Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Rosenberg.
In the Auditor General's conclusions, she wrote, “To have an effective resource allocation process, Health Canada needs to allocate funds based on plans, risks, and priorities; sources of funding and program costs; and program results.” Yet in her opening statement, in paragraph 4, she concludes by saying, “At the present time, the Department does not know whether they are above or below the minimum level of activity required in the three programs”, meaning the regulatory programs.
Then when I take a look at exhibit 8.4, the first column, “Protecting public from hazardous products and substances”, under the heading “Consumer Product Safety”, it indicates that there has been an insufficient level of activity; under “Cosmetics”, insufficient level of activity; under “Workplace Hazardous Materials Information Systems”, insufficient level of activity; under “Consumer and Clinical Radiation Protection”, insufficient level of activity; and under “New Substances Assessment and Control”, insufficient level of activity.
Boy, the average consumer, the average Canadian, if they saw this, would be very concerned. In most cases when we have reports come before us, we're concerned because tax dollars may be mismanaged, but in this particular case we're talking about the taxpayers' lives. I'm actually very glad that the Auditor General has red-flagged this situation for the government, because serious action needs to be taken on these files.
Cancer, in its various forms, is one of the leading killers of Canadians. Very specifically, in a lot of these categories of products that you have listed here, we have “insufficient level of activity”. I would certainly hope that as you review this Auditor General's report, when you go to Treasury Board you'll note to the government that we need to move seriously, because this isn't just a matter of tax dollars being wasted, but lives. In fact, this past fall a number of MPs had their blood tested, and they virtually had a chemical cocktail in their blood.
Besides just the pre-market and post-market analysis and regulatory work that you do, has your department ever looked at the idea of actually going out there and getting a handle on not just what Canadians across the country are potentially facing but what they actually have in their bodies, especially our schoolchildren, who would be most gravely affected by these chemical cocktails that we seem to have inside our bodies? Has Health Canada ever looked at that as part of its process? It doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere in any of these recommendations.