Thank you very much, Chairperson.
First, thank you to all the witnesses for being here today. I thought your presentations were excellent. A special thank you to Dr. Chisholm, who's here from Argentina. I don't know if there's a time difference, but it's wonderful that you took time out from your conference to participate in this very important committee hearing today.
What really jumped out at me is how remarkably close you all are, first of all, in identifying the serious and urgent problem we have of drug storages, but also what needs to be done.
We've already had one meeting when we heard from industry representatives, and I have to say the government members clearly went after Sandoz, which was warranted, but there's a huge issue here about government responsibility, or lack thereof, in what we've seen, and I think you've all identified that.
Frankly, it's quite shocking to hear today in the testimony that the anesthesiologists association wrote to the minister in January of 2011, drawing attention to and putting out an early warning about shortages. We know the Competition Bureau also issued warnings to the government in 2008. So it's really quite shocking that nothing has been done. While there are issues around how the industry has performed, I'm hoping that today we can focus on what the government needs to do to address this problem.
Dr. Chisholm, you noted in your testimony that we need to predict, identify, and manage around supply disruptions. You may be aware of the motion that was passed unanimously in the House of Commons that uses very similar language; it said “anticipate, identify, and manage”.
The CMA certainly said a very similar thing: we must have a monitoring, an early notification system.
I'm very interested in the Best Medicines Coalition's suggestions that we need a regulatory framework. We need mandatory reporting.
That's really my question. We know this is being looked at in the U.S. We know that New Zealand has a model whereby they require the manufacturers to provide much more information in terms of looking for alternate sources. Now that we have this motion passed, what is it that you want to see Health Canada specifically do and the Government of Canada come back with, and how quickly? If you could give us some idea of the priority, what needs to be done first, what needs to be done second, that would be very helpful.
To Dr. Chisholm, I note that you mentioned that a resolution had been passed unanimously at your world congress in Argentina, and I'm wondering if you could send that resolution to us when you get back home, plus anything else that came out of the congress, because obviously you had a lot of discussion there. I'd appreciate it if you could forward that to the committee.
I'd ask the witnesses to address that question of your immediate priorities and then the longer term, and your timeframe of what needs to be done.