My name is Supriya Sharma. I'm the director general of the therapeutic products directorate in Health Canada.
Maybe I'll just address the issue of clinical practice guidelines and what we do and don't do.
As a regulator, it is a bit unusual that we would be stepping into the area of facilitating clinical practice guidelines. Ms. Milburn-Hopwood is correct in that as Health Canada, especially around the public health area, we do often step into those, but very rarely do we really move to clinical practice guidelines for specific products. However, in unusual situations, where there's a leadership role—in this case, around a specific category of product—we do take a leadership role in terms of bringing people to the table.
When we do that, it would depend on the individual issue. So if there are implications for provincial heath authorities or for individual hospitals or for individual practitioners, we would basically look at the issue and then bring the appropriate people to the table.
For some of the medical device issues, absolutely, we've had people from the various ministries of health at the table, along with certain health professional organizations and certain individuals as well.