Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
In October 2013 Marit McKenzie of Calgary died of a blood clot in her lungs after taking Diane-35, which is one of the newer generations of birth control pills, for acne. She was preparing for her school formal. This use was not proven safe and effective; it was off-label use prescribed by her doctor. Tragically, because she bought it at Shoppers Drug Mart, she had no safety warning of blood clots and so she died. Shoppers Drug Mart is recorded in the Toronto Star as saying they didn't issue a warning because they didn't want to frighten consumers about rare adverse effects, so they robbed her of the opportunity to make an informed decision.
By law in Alberta, the maximum damages Shoppers or the drug company would have to pay for such a loss is $85,000. So in normal risk management practices why would they warn patients? It hurt sales, and if something terrible happens, they only have to pay $85,000 anyway.
I joined the minister recently to announce the transparency framework, and the media took a mixed approach. They gave credit that it was a good idea, for example, in the Toronto Star, but then they criticized it because all drug reviews weren't going to be published right away, which I thought was very unfair. This is a huge change. If drug reviews for Diane-35 had been published and open, I suspect Marit Mackenzie would have had a proper safety warning and might have decided to not take Diane-35 at all.
Could you please comment on the transparency framework, on the change of publishing drug reviews, and why it makes sense to publish the ones for which there is not an established safety profile, the newer drugs, or one that appeared to have a risk, rather than go to the trouble of printing all of them now? A drug review can be up to 10,000 pages, and then it has to go for translation. There's a tremendous cost and timeframe to do that. Would you comment on the fact that—I hope you agree with me—it makes sense to publish the ones where there's an apparent risk first and then go to the others?