We would actually take the process a whole lot further.
I don't know if people here recognize that Canada is probably the last bastion of these closed-door meetings. If you look at the U.S. FDA, when they have hearings around new drugs, they're televised, for goodness' sake. You can come in and testify at them. When the EMEA holds its reviews, they're open to patients and they're open to the public. You can actually sign up and be heard, depending on the particular drug, etc. Unfortunately, I think Canada remains in some kind of a backwater in terms of openness, transparency, and accessibility. To me, transparency means opening the doors and inviting people in.
Somebody mentioned that they understood we had the opportunity to make an appeal to the common drug review on the Fabry issue. I said no, we came in with pickets and the TV cameras and we kind of stormed the offices while they were having their meeting. We made enough of a fuss that Jill Sanders actually held a meeting with the patient groups. She insisted that we had no opportunity to see the committee members, but that she would listen and take our information to the people there. That is not a meeting. That's not transparency.
Transparency means having open access. If you want to have confidence in the process, open it up. Let people come in, and let people participate. I think that's the only way we're going to end up with a truly accountable process. The CDR says that it will publish minutes. That's much too late—after the fact. We know you can make minutes look like anything you want them to look like.
We all know what in camera sessions look like. If there's something that's truly confidential, close the doors. That's fine, nobody objects to that. But for goodness' sake, we have to get out of the dark ages and make the drug review process a truly accountable one.
Health Canada says they're going to try to do it, but they can't get the regulations to change in order to do it. Fine. We encourage them—