Finance committee  Thank you very much for the question. I am Celia Lourenco, with the health products and food branch of Health Canada. We're aiming to introduce three new authorities at the level of the act, starting with what we call the “supplementary rules of authority”, which will allow us to have a ministerial order put in place to address situations in which products are being intentionally misused.

International Trade committee  The estimates are that the current market employs about 10,000 in this space in Canada. We don't have the numbers, though, about how the market grew during COVID. We don't have those numbers, unless other colleagues do.

International Trade committee  During consultations, we heard a significant amount of feedback from different sectors and stakeholders. Definitely the areas of support were on the idea of combining the regulations under one framework, as we've already discussed, as well as providing support for that transition period that I talked about earlier.

International Trade committee  Yes, there's an interest in European countries as a next step.

International Trade committee  Sure. If a company wants to market one of these products in Canada, they file an application with Health Canada. They can also come and meet with us in advance to talk about their application and what their plans are. We are happy to provide guidance on that. We also have guidance that's published on our website for companies to be able to follow the process in terms of applying to Canada.

International Trade committee  The companies are the ones who initiate the process in terms of getting a product reviewed and authorized in Canada. There are different ways that they can have their product approved, depending on whether it's a new product, a product that's copying another one that's already available on the market, or a product that is already marketed in the U.S.

International Trade committee  I'll turn to David to talk abut the exceptional application.

International Trade committee  We know that about a third of the companies that market these products in Canada are international. The vast majority, over 90%, are American companies. The other 66% or so are Canadian companies, and out of those, 25% are small businesses. A good majority of those small businesses do those licensing agreements, as I explained.

International Trade committee  These changes have been a long time coming. We've been hearing from industry stakeholders for quite a long time about the concern of having different products with similar risks, similar applications, similar uses and similar claims regulated under different frameworks. We've been hearing from industry for a long time about the desire to have this fixed so that depending on the product they have, they could just go to one single place to get their application.

International Trade committee  I don't have the—

International Trade committee  We had a lot of input from domestic manufacturers from different provinces in the country. We definitely had robust input from different manufacturers.

International Trade committee  In terms of the responses, I don't have the percentage from domestic manufacturers.

International Trade committee  I'm looking through my notes to see if I have the data. I'll have to come back to that. I'll have to check my notes.

International Trade committee  Well, several associations provided comments. We received comments from definitely a number of different associations. It was quite robust.

International Trade committee  I can answer the question, Madam Chair.