Health committee  Part of this is that it would apply only to children up to the age of 13 in the way it is framed. Then, yes, there would be a process to define how best to do that. Depending on how broad or narrow those parameters are, we would do that either based on age or based on weight, or there may be parameters that would apply to that whole group—from the age of 0 to 13—that may be applicable.

Health committee  Perhaps I'll add that it would just be focused on the “advertising primarily directed at children” part of that. It wouldn't affect any of these products' abilities to be sold or to be advertised to adults or in a variety of other places. It's really very narrowly focused on advertising of certain products directed towards children.

Health committee  Yes. The challenge with the way it's currently worded is in things like “children's diets” not being defined. It's a bit vague. Adding “prescribed” in those two areas then allows the Governor in Council to make regulations to define the scope of that. It's important to do that for children compared to other people, because they have different nutrient requirements, so it would have to be tailored.

Health committee  They've gone up. At this point in time, one in three children in Canada is defined as either overweight or obese. For indigenous children, it's two out of three children meeting those criteria. Those criteria are based on your body mass index and the charts. It's been increasing.

Health committee  I have an example. You referred to a nutrition initiative that was already there, the Canadian children's food and beverage advertising initiative, which is a self-regulatory measure that's already in place. When we looked at the ads that were directed to children and teens for foods that were high in salt, sugar and fat, three-quarters of those ads were from industry members that were signatories to that initiative.

Health committee  I can speak to the consultations we've done, because in parallel to the process that's going on with the private member's bill, we at the department are also working on regulations and policies in this area. In terms of the Canadian Beverage Association in particular, we've met at least three or four times in the last four months.

Health committee  What we know about the science is that exposure to advertising for children really is different based on their developmental stages. We know that, for example, the youngest of children cannot even differentiate between what advertising is and what a television program or a YouTube video might be.

Health committee  To be clear, we don't have regulations or a policy that's been brought forward at this point in time. Obviously, the bill is dealing with legislation, which is enabling legislation. Under that would come regulations to be able to better define the scope of the intent, what it would apply to and all of that.

Health committee  —there is one company in Canada that has provided a submission to Health Canada to produce formulas here.

Health committee  Thank you. The direct answer is that there isn't dedicated funding for it at this time, because we're actually working with other departments, including ISED. I'll also add that currently in Canada we have over 150 formulas that are approved and another 70 that were brought in temporarily, so in terms of which formulas might be useful to have manufactured in Canada, it's still being discussed, but also—

Health committee  In terms of the remote inspections, it's true that we relied more on those over the pandemic, but it wasn't the first time we had done those sorts of paper-based assessments of facilities. First of all, the remote inspections were on the lowest-risk products, such as the APIs, which have other controls on them as they go through the drug manufacturing process.

Health committee  It's true that we've had recalls of products based on nitrosamines. Nitrosamines, as you know, are impurities that can happen from manufacturing. We have seen more products test positive for nitrosamines over the past few years. It may be that we've also had better technology for detecting them.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. When we were preparing for the receipt of the submissions, there were a lot of discussions that happened before we received them in terms of the requirements. For the safety, efficacy and quality of the vaccines, it was decided very early that we were not going to make any changes to those requirements, maintaining the same rigorous standards that we would for all vaccines.

Health committee  Basically, there are criteria, called DSM criteria, for mental health conditions that are considered conditions. There are conditions in that diagnostic area that refer to dependence. It's usually called “substance use disorder”, but there are different variations. Yes, it's considered an illness.

Health committee  The treatment really varies by person. It's very similar to other issues that are related to mental health in that it's not one size fits all. Depending on the individual, depending on their circumstances and depending on their illness, they may respond to one type of treatment differently than another type of treatment.