Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank our two witnesses for joining us today. My question is for Mr. Beaudet, but both witnesses may answer.
Both of you conduct a lot of research. Yesterday and the day before, I met with representatives of the Canadian Organization for Rare Disorders. At a conference held yesterday, we learned that Canada was the only developed country without any policies on medication for rare diseases, given our small population. Internationally, a number of countries work together in order to establish a patient pool that is large enough to make information sharing possible, to make available medication that may be more appropriate or at least to suggest medication that may hopefully be used to treat those patients.
Some advancement was apparently made in the area two years ago, but things have stagnated since, and we do not know what Health Canada has done in this regard. What do you think? Why has no progress been made? Why are we not joining forces with other developed countries?