Agriculture committee  There is one in the United States. We watch that and monitor it very closely. I'm not sure how often they publish their report, but it is a very large, very comprehensive study of farmers and their families.

Agriculture committee  We work in a few ways. With cancer statistics, we're obviously very interested in receiving information, but we're also interested in improving the collection of exposure to the risk factors that led to the development of the cancer statistics in the first place. This fall we had in a group representing the Ontario College of Family Physicians, including the CEO and including the primary author of the report they published a number of years ago, in order to meet with them and go over in detail how it is we approach our evaluation of the health impact, to share with them, to hear their concerns, to hear about the survey they use with patients when they have concerns about exposure from the environment impacting on health.

Agriculture committee  We have statistics from the last few years that show roughly half of the new actives we've reviewed have been done jointly with the United States. That is better than the experience from ten years before. So joint reviews are improving access at the same time to both Canada and the United States.

Agriculture committee  We did get some resources for implementing the new act, which started in 2003. I don't know that there was, at that time, a real recognition of the technology gap and the kinds of pressures upon us to look not just at what the registrants bring, but to also look in a more proactive sense at minor usage.

Agriculture committee  The new act does give us strengthened post-registration controls. Part of that is realized with the two sets of regulations I mentioned. One is the incident reporting, which includes adverse affects. Once that's implemented--I believe it's in force on January 1, 2007, so the beginning of the new year--it will be mandatory for registrants to report to us all incident reports received, including adverse affects.

Agriculture committee  Sure. Thank you. Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to provide an update on our activities at Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency. As requested by the Standing Committee, I have submitted a report that indicates the number of new and minor use pesticides approved, the number or older pesticides that have been re-evaluated, and the number of temporary and emergency registrations granted.