Bill C-265

An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (List of Therapeutic Products Pre-approved for Special Access)

Sponsor

Marcus Powlowski Liberal

Introduced as a private member’s bill. (These don’t often become law.)

Status

Second reading (House), as of March 19, 2026

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Summary

This is from the published bill.

This enactment amends the Food and Drugs Act to establish a list of therapeutic products pre-approved for special access to allow streamlined access to treatment for patients with serious or life-threatening conditions or where there is an unmet need. It also provides parameters to guide the Minister of Health in issuing letters of authorization for the sale of new drugs for emergency treatment under the Food and Drug Regulations .

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Bill numbers are reused for different bills each new session. Perhaps you were looking for one of these other C-265s:

C-265 (2022) National Perinatal Mental Health Strategy Act

C-265 (2021) Émilie Sansfaçon Act

C-265 (2016) Secure, Adequate, Acessible and Affordable Housing Act

C-265 (2013) Canada Post-Secondary Education Act

1^st reading

Food and Drugs ActRoutine Proceedings

March 11th, 2026 / 3:35 p.m.

Liberal

Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-265, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (List of Therapeutic Products Pre-approved for Special Access).

Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce my private member's bill, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act with respect to the list of therapeutic products pre-approved for special access. My PMB would reform the special access program, which would allow doctors to access medications that are not approved yet by Health Canada.

I will give an idea of the problem the bill seeks to address. A pediatric ICU doctor recently told me about spending six hours trying to resuscitate a child, the first four hours of which were spent trying to access a drug which is available only through this program, even though that drug is considered first-line therapy in the United States. This should not have happened. It should not happen in the future. The bill would reduce the red tape associated with this program and also leave the decision in life-threatening situations as to whether to use a drug not yet approved by Health Canada to the clinicians, not to bureaucrats in Ottawa.

I would like to thank SickKids, the sick children's hospital in Toronto, which co-wrote the first draft of the bill with me. I would also like to thank all the other children's hospitals that had a lot of input. I would like to thank the member for Kitchener South—Hespeler, an ICU doctor, for seconding the bill.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)