Health committee  Merci. The number of energy drinks currently licensed in Canada is 18. We've issued 9 product licences, and that equates to 18 different products. What this means is that you can have one licence for a few different formats, for example, or for flavours. There are 18 licensed products.

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Malo. Yes, of course, we are fully aware of the NAPRA decision, which is fairly recent. For products that formerly had a DIN and now have an NPN, so are now natural health products, they were dealt with very efficiently by us. First, under the regulations, we gave them six years, which is a fairly long time.

Health committee  For the moment we are not planning any transitional measures. I assume you are talking about transitional regulations.

Health committee  No. At this point we are more considering administrative solutions. We have already implemented solutions relating to the way the work is done in the directorate. That being said, we will see how things go. Certainly we are working very closely with NAPRA to find a solution and recognize, as you said earlier, that there can in fact be an impact on the industry.

Health committee  To come back to the question Mr. Rosenberg answered, yes, we certainly have details on our website. There are information sheets created for consumers, pharmacists and the industry that have been posted for several months showing the three dates, 2009, March 2010 and December 2010.

Health committee  No, I am simply going to go back to what I said earlier. The backlog will be “addressed”, in English, because I think that expresses it better, before the end of March, and the backlog will be eliminated, if you want to use the term “eliminated”, before the end of December of this year.

Health committee  For the year and a half I have been the director general, we have always been talking about the same deadlines. The first deadline you mentioned, in 2009, is the only one we see in the present regulations and it applies only to products with a DIN, Drug Identification Number. These are products that were in fact regulated under the former regulations that are now transferred to the new regulations.

Health committee  No, because for the term “complete”, I'm going to come back to that.

Health committee  Right, I apologize if I said that, but the distinction is that 193 applications are left to be addressed, and in the total exact figure, which is 3,098, the rest, that is, the 3,098 less the 193, all the applications can be completed with a final decision by the end of December.

Health committee  Thank you. I am certainly going to try to explain the figures and I admit they can sometimes cause confusion. In part, it is because we are using two terms. I am going to use the English term because I think it expresses it better. In French, we would say it is the same term. In English, we say “addressed”, while in French, we say “traité”.

Health committee  I cannot give you an exact figure, but I can provide you with the data. The figure I referred to earlier is quite relevant, because it is rather general. Most are Canadian. Out of the 3,000 products, I can say with some certainty that at least 75% to 80% of them are Canadian and 20% to 25% are probably from the U.S.

Health committee  I'm not sure I can provide you with the exact figures with respect to manufacturers from Quebec. There are currently approximately 1,100 companies that have licensed products. Most are Canadian manufacturers or distributors. Approximately 25% are foreign, mainly from the United States.

Health committee  You are asking how many companies, mainly from Quebec, are waiting for their products to be approved. Is that correct?

Health committee  Good morning. We are always very conscious of timelines. To date, we have settled 99% of cases, in other words we only have 1% left to process. Within this backlog, there are only 193 product applications left to be completed. So, we are very confident that we will reach the stated objective by the end of March and within the timelines we had set.

Health committee  We have established a number of initiatives that have helped us respond more swiftly to approval requests. Today, we have 150 monographs as well as 15 or so labelling standards. We have also set up a data base that is accessible to those who want to have their products licensed.