Dr. Barica provided her considerable expertise to the laboratory of applied ecology in the faculty of agriculture at the University of Southern Bohemia in the Czech Republic.

My understanding from reading the bill, and please clarify, is that most risk group 2 specimens found in university labs or in big laboratories are already following biosafety guidelines, and the onus is now to find the ones that we do not know about, that have not imported or transported pathogens and toxins from one lab to another.

As ODS produced for feedstock, process agent, laboratory and analytical uses can be released for free circulation in the Community, they should be distinguished from those substances produced for other uses, in order to avoid any diversions of controlled substances intended for feedstock, as a process agent or for laboratory and analytical uses to other uses which are controlled under this Regulation.

Given that the risk to Canadians posed by the presence of human pathogens and toxins in labs is low, according to the Conservative government; that the bill is designed to make the laboratory biosafety guidelines mandatory through licensing, without the government first consulting the primary stakeholders and assessing the impact on such things as university teaching and labs in health facilities; that the government's goal is to address a potential terrorist risk by regulating pathogens and toxins and that the Anti-terrorism Act and other acts can already cover some of the provisions of Bill C-11; and that this bill can potentially i ...[+++]nvade the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces, for all of these reasons, the Bloc Québécois is calling for an in-depth review of Bill C-11.

It only requires that all labs that import human pathogens and toxins adhere to the laboratory biosafety guidelines, the LBGs, but these existing guidelines are not mandatory for labs that acquire human pathogens and toxins from domestic sources even though they are applied widely on a voluntary basis as an industry standard.

These laboratories should be provided with the opportunity to continue to operate at a biosafety level 2 and be permitted to apply for pathogen-specific exemptions for those risk group 3 pathogens that they routinely or occasionally encounter, such as HIV. Alternatively, a notification process for risk group 3 pathogens could be implemented that would require the community laboratories operating at biosafety level 2 to notify the Public Health Agency of Canada when they encounter risk group 3 pathogens in the course of their work.