Health committee  I'd like to say that we might not be aware here, but we have a whole team of people who are scanning this, who are probably aware of this, and we can check into whether we know about it.

Health committee  But as you can.... If I may, Madam Chair--

Health committee  It's quite true we are reactive. We are trying to move toward a much more proactive approach. There's no question about it. So if we did get an indication of two deaths due to this vaccine, we would have to make sure we knew the cause and effect in this case, because--

Health committee  That's absolutely right. There are jurisdictional issues with attaching anything to the licences of health care professionals such as doctors or pharmacists. This is a practice of medicine and pharmacy that is under provincial and territorial jurisdiction. We've been having discu

Health committee  It's provincial.

Health committee  Surprisingly no, the Minister of Health does not have any legislative authority to recall a health product at this point in time. What has worked in the past is that it's usually been in a company's best interest to recall a health product when something goes wrong. We've had ver

Health committee  The documents we've tabled today have really benefited from the Standing Committee on Health's report, in a number of areas. So in that 30 seconds I would say that the blueprint for renewal, the new action plan that is being tabled and proposed, has benefited from the work of thi

Health committee  Part of our proposed action plan is to get more and better information out to Canadians. We've been doing a lot of work with health care professionals and with the communities, but we're trying now to reach out to Canadians much, much more.

Health committee  We're looking at the best way to get information about adverse events. For example, the manufacturers must report them--absolutely. That's mandatory. We're encouraging health care professionals and Canadians to report them. We're working with all our sources across the world to g

Health committee  In terms of your first point, about balancing the benefits and risks of any health product, you're absolutely right that it's a call we make in terms of providing timely access to innovative products but also assuring health and safety first and foremost. That leads into the CD

Health committee  We currently have an expert advisory committee on the vigilance of health products, which has just been struck a few months ago, which includes patient-consumer groups and health care professionals. They're there to provide advice to me in terms of post-market surveillance issues

Health committee  I'll let David answer in a minute, but I was going to say that what we've said, and encouraged, and put on our website in terms of inviting public input into policy-making, into decision-making, is one way of doing this. We have a whole marketed health products directorate, which

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  You're right, there is a jurisdictional issue. As we all know, this is the practice of medicine, which is under provincial and territorial jurisdiction. I think the movement is that we're all trying to work together. The health care professional community, the industry, all level