If you had asked me this five years ago, I would have said definitely. Many of us have been very pleased with the kind of progress Health Canada has been able to make. Certainly they've demonstrated it, as we look at something like the progressive licensing framework, as we look at some of the post-market surveillance. I sit on the vigilance of health products committee. Health Canada has demonstrated in lots of ways in which it can be fleet of foot.
I will raise one caution about these stand-alone agencies—and this is not to reject the idea, because I think there's some merit in it as well. I go back to groups like CADTH, which are supposedly independent but at the end of the day are accountable to nobody. They're not accountable to the public, but they sit off...and that's not the same as the Public Health Agency of Canada. I have some real concerns about that. They have an independence that was in theory supposed to be good but at the end of the day also becomes counterproductive.
I don't think there's any such thing as being unbiased. Whether it's government, industry, or patients, we all have our biases. To presume there's any way to set up something that is going to be more unbiased because it's outside any particular group....
I think what Colleen and the others have suggested makes great sense. We need multi-stakeholders. We can talk about how we can achieve that, whether it's with an independent agency or whether it's within Health Canada. I would say that probably doesn't matter as much as how it's working.