Mr. Speaker, we are having a wholesome debate today.
I want to reiterate what the bill is actually about. Bill C-17 would bring in the following measures. It would allow the government to recall drugs or order the distributor to take corrective actions to remedy the problem with the drugs. The government could order a manufacturer or importer to modify the label of a drug to update the side effects or health risks associated with it. The minister could order a review of the drug and to be reported back to the minister. People will be quite surprised by the fact that this cannot get done at this point. It would give the Governor in Council new powers to create regulations as needed for labelling and authorization criteria. It would require manufacturers to communicate risks associated with their drugs that have come up in other countries. It would impose new fines for keeping unsafe product on the market, up to $5 million per day, and could include jail time, with a stronger penalty if the manufacturer knowingly erred.
A lot of Canadians would be surprised to find out that these measures are not in place at this point in time. It is evident that we need a comprehensive drug plan so all Canadians can be assured their medications are safe for use and so they have access to plain language information about why their medications are safe, including the testing process and medication labelling.
We have heard over and over again at the health committee, when I sat on it a few years ago and today, whether it is GMO or anything else, that people want to see the labelling. They want to be informed, contrary to what the government sometimes thinks. Sometimes it thinks people are not paying attention to what is being said in the House. It thinks people are not paying attention to the bills. Canadians are paying attention.
While we support the legislation, more needs to be done to improve the drug safety measures. We will be proposing amendments to improve the bill. I understand the Liberals are also looking at proposing amendments as well. This is why we should not be rushing bills through. These issues date back many years. In 2011, the Auditor General warned that consumers were not receiving safety warnings about pharmaceutical drugs fast enough because Health Canada was slow to act on potential issues that it identified. That was one of the reasons the Auditor General brought forward.
Fast track now to 2014, three years later, and we are just getting this. If the government is saying that this was such a critical issue, why did it not bring it forward? If the Liberals are saying that this is such a critical issue, why did they not bring it forward when they had 13 years to do it?
I forgot to mention earlier, Mr. Speaker, that I will be splitting my time.
Certainly the NDP is looking at proposing amendments to improve the bill when it reaches committee. In the meantime, it is important to have a healthy debate in the House so we can get the ideas forward, so people can be more educated about what is going on and what the government is putting forward. It is a great bill. Why do we not want Canadians to know about it just by having the debate in the House and being able to hear from other witnesses as they may want to choose to have their words heard at committee, whether it is by writing a submission or being called as a witness?
Sometimes the government will put in place some type of advertising. This is basically what has happened here. It indicates it is taking care of the well-being of Canadians, but as we can see, the bill shows there was a big void. We know, for the most part, when we send something to committee, and my colleague spoke to this a little while ago, the Conservatives still have a majority on the committee and all too often they are just eager to pass legislation without proper amendments. Because the amendments are coming from the opposition, they sometimes think that they are not noteworthy.
Therefore, we want to ensure that people are aware of the proposition and of the changes and concerns we have with legislation. That is why we are having this debate today, so more people are aware of needed amendments and whether the government acts on those.
The Auditor General also found there were gaps in transparency that were keeping Canadians in the dark about Health Canada's drug safety work. Unlike many other countries, Health Canada also does not make information on clinical trials public.
I have a sister who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at the age of 50. She was on a clinical trial. We would have liked to have known what those results were at the end of the day and more information about that.
If information on clinical trials are public, they would show the health risks and side effects associated with the drug during its testing phase. All Canadians should be made aware of what those are. I also think the scientific community is looking at this as well. It does not want to be kept in the dark. The information needs to be passed on in a public way.
When it comes to providing Canadians with the information they need, Health Canada has been slow to react as of late. It took a full week before the voluntary recall of Alysena 28 was communicated to Health Canada and made public. Guess what happened with that? Many women were exposed to unwanted pregnancies. Now there is a class action lawsuit against Apotex for the faulty birth control pills.
The United States stops these medications from going forward. In Canada, we hear about these medications being taken off the market, yet we continue administering them to Canadians. We need to react a little more swiftly and we need to pay attention to what is going on. While Canadians are Canadians and U.S. citizens are Americans, they are all people and it affects them the same way.
Currently drugs can be prescribed without knowing what effects they can have on children, seniors, or nursing women because Canada and other countries do not share the information they collect on the particular effects of drugs and they do not ask drug companies to share it. That is extremely important.
It is not just the NDP that is calling for amendments to the bill.
Dr. Joel Lexchin, who is the drug safety policy expert at York University, calls Bill C-17 a step forward for Canada's drug safety legislation. We basically have said the same thing.
Dr. Lexchin has also expressed concerns that the legislation would not go far enough and that Canadians would still not know enough about the evaluation process that determines whether medications would be safe enough to be sold in Canada.
Let us hear what else he has to say on what needs to be improved in the legislation. I hope the colleagues across are listening to what needs to be improved because these are some of the amendments that the NDP will be bringing forward at committee.
He says that the new drug safety law should require that when the minister makes a decision about a product needing additional testing or that a product should be withdrawn, that all of the documentation used in making that decision should be made public. All of the safety and efficacy effectiveness information about a product that was generated either in the testing phase or once the drug was on the market should be publicly available, including periodic safety update reports. How important is that? It is extremely important.
He also says that the minister should be able to make decisions without prior consultation with the company involved, and those are important to note. All too often we find that the big corporate entities have the government in their pockets. Therefore, this would certainly put that to rest. When a company is required to do additional testing, there should be an annual report about the status of that additional testing. Additionally, the complete results of those additional tests should be public.
He further says that if companies are required to do additional testing, then the companies should turn over the funding to do that testing to a neutral third party, for example, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The CIHR should be responsible for selecting the researchers to do the testing and the data should be analyzed completely independent from the company.
This is about the safety of patients and Canadians.
The government can go on and on about doing some advertising, but until it takes action such as some of the amendments that have been suggested here, we will not get that perfect bill that could provide more security to Canadians. We know over and over again when the government has done advertising. We can look at the economic action plan. We can look at Twitter feed amount it actually puts in. What really matters is to ensure we have proper legislation that will protect Canadians.
