Health committee  I'll answer it partway. I recognize our terms of reference, and one of the important aspects I think will help position us well for the future is the part of our terms of reference that calls for a monitoring program. I think that monitoring program and its publishing of the re

Health committee  The approach very early on was to have the working group be quite comprehensive in its makeup. We are fortunate that we have advice and input from groups like the Heart and Stroke Foundation but also from many other areas of government. The Public Health Agency participates. We h

Health committee  Absolutely. Health Canada, being the provider of the secretariat, has been a tremendous resource to the members of the working group. When we've needed information, they have, on our behalf, started developing targets and analyzing the food supply for us. Absolutely, they have be

Health committee  We aren't specifically, in the sense that we won't be able to address things like obesity through this.

Health committee  Obviously, we don't want our actions to jeopardize or be in conflict with other activities. We're sensitive to it, but we are not specifically addressing our recommendations to address those other health questions.

Health committee  I would just echo one comment. Given the work we've done, it might be a unique opportunity for other countries to learn what it has taken us two years to learn so that they don't have to go through the same phase. They can catch up. Just as we have learned from some of the experi

Health committee  I can't speak of the specific challenges per se from an economic point of view for the food industry, but I can tell you about a couple of things that came up at the research meeting that I think are germane to the argument. The food industry doesn't always have an idea of what

Health committee  Yes, absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, the working group was setting targets for the food supply, recognizing that those targets would likely be staged over time, but very much that they would be something that could be monitored and evaluated in terms of progress over time.

Health committee  Yes, scientific research has shown that the change in palate or the acclimatization of sodium takes anywhere between three weeks and three months.

Health committee  We announced our interim target to really help boost the process, to get it going while we were deliberating. Secondly, a couple of things have occurred. As I mentioned earlier, we had three subcommittees as part of the working group, each of them tasked with developing strateg

Health committee  To three months. The important thing is all food has to be changed. You have to be exposed to the same level of sodium in all food, because if you have some low, some high, you don't acclimatize.

Health committee  I think Dr. Pipe had some very useful comments. I can say that I actually have invested a lot of time and energy into seeing the work of this sodium working group. You mentioned leadership. What was often lacking is people recognized the problem but nobody stepped up and showed

Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm here today as professor and chair of the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto and as vice-chair of the Canadian Sodium Working Group. The sodium working group is a multi-stakeholder task force that has been mandated to ov

Health committee  I will say yes.

Health committee  We've agreed our first target is to get the Canadian population down to the UL. We think that is the first achievable milestone that we can--