Thank you, Madam Chair.
Before I go to my questioning, I just want to place the following motion on notice. It deals with artificial intelligence and goes to the government's announcement from September, when it launched the AI strategy task force. There are the consultations that are taking place this month, and then the task force is supposed to be sharing some of those bold ideas they have gathered in November.
I want to table this notice of motion:
That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(3), the Standing Committee on Science and Research undertake a study of no fewer than four meetings on the federal government’s approach to artificial intelligence, considering the committee’s mandate to study matters related to science and research, which includes AI technology, and that the committee invite:
(i) the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation to appear for one meeting for no less than two hours,
(ii) federal officials from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, and
(iii) a range of AI industry representatives and experts; and
that the committee report its findings and recommendations to the House.
Madam Chair, we have sent that notice of motion to the clerk, and that will be shared with all the colleagues.
Thank you for that. With that, I will begin my line of questioning.
I'll start with Dr. Skinner.
Thank you for your comments, which were quite illuminating in a sense. I've seen some of your comments and you talked about AMR now killing nearly 1.3 million people a year. We've had other panellists appear, talking about the cost to the provincial health care systems at about $1.4 billion a year. We've heard from other panellists again, witnesses, talking about the difficulties here to get therapies to market. In regard to the Health Canada special access programs, in terms of antimicrobial therapies, it was mentioned that only three out of 18 new antibiotics launched worldwide are available here in Canada.
I want to get to some of what your comments were. I feel that right near the end of your comments you were running out of time. You were talking about the 2023 pilot program and moving this forward, and the notion everyone's been talking about today—about the push and pull incentives—and you talked about real incentives and barriers at the hospital level. I just wonder if you could expand on that, please.