First of all, it's important to understand, and I don't have...unless the committee gives me five minutes just to explain how the drug model is not designed for good health outcomes....
You have to understand that the purposes of our drug regulations are to protect intellectual property rights. They're not to get good health outcomes. You won't find in the Food and Drugs Act or regulations any legal onus on Health Canada to get good health outcomes.
The reason why we've defined drugs so broadly...and it's the same in all western nations. Everything ingested is a drug if it's used for a therapeutic purpose, in every western nation. We're all captured by this model, but that again is a fantastic situation. I mean, I would argue that we need stricter regulation of the pharmaceutical drugs, and I could explain to you how our drug approval process for the chemical drugs is a complete fraud on the Canadian populace.
I agree with you there, but how on earth do we end up in a situation where the only treatments, even if they're perfectly benign, are...we have to go through the government for that?