Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all of you for being here. It's a very informative panel.
I want to start with you, Alan Cassels. I've just been skimming through your book, Selling Sickness, and you make an observation that I think we've heard supported at other testimony, that the pharmaceutical industry is working very hard behind the scenes to define and design the latest disorders and dysfunctions in order to create and expand markets. You talk about that with the words “disease-mongering”.
I know we don't have time to get into that whole issue here today, but I would like you to relate that to what we're dealing with in terms of post-market surveillance and with respect to Bill C-51, which is actually about post-market surveillance, supposedly.
The fact that the drug companies that you refer to have been very supportive of Bill C-51 raises all kinds of alarm bells for me, but I don't want to just be subjective about it. I want to know if in fact there is some legitimacy to the argument we have made that the progressive licensing framework will in effect facilitate speedier approval of drugs into the market, and hence cause more safety concerns down the road, as opposed to being a neutral scheme, as the government claims it is.