Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My questions are for Mr. Bernard first.
I, too, was very happy with the measures in the budget. I'm going to share something personal with you. My sister, a scientist, is on an animal protection committee. You're probably familiar with those. She is one of the scientists in charge of examining and approving the protocols used for scientific testing on animals. According to her, the committees are multidisciplinary, with a veterinarian, a researcher who doesn't do any animal testing and a researcher who does. They do a quite a bit of technical research like that. The process is already quite stringent. She was very glad that her own committee had been rejecting a lot of animal testing.
The budget brings to mind all the work that people like you and organizations like yours do to advocate for animal protection. You said that banning unnecessary cosmetic testing on animals would make Canada a global leader in the development of animal testing alternatives.
Now that the ban is included in the budget implementation bill, what do you think?