I'll take a stab at that. Thank you.
I think there are two things that need to happen simultaneously. One is you have to remedy the gap that's there at the moment. I don't have any handle on what's in the supply chain. I don't know anything about the business of manufacturing drugs, but looking at it from the patient's perspective, these have vanished in an unpredictable way.
The first thing is to stabilize the problem, stabilize the patient, and find some new drugs. Boucherville, for example, is not the only plant in the world that manufactures injectables. At the same time, you need to address the problem. We've heard some solutions, and we've heard some very good suggestions from my colleagues on either side.
I hope this committee had some testimony from the pharmaceutical industry. This is their problem. Why is it these drugs have vanished? It's a complex problem manufacturing it. My role as a surgeon is to explain to a patient under the concept of informed consent what it is that I want to do. I have to make the functioning of your gastrointestinal tract, for example, something that you can understand. That's my job.
I would suggest that we need to get that kind of information so that it can be used on a go-forward basis to prevent it from happening again. I don't know what I don't know about drug manufacturers. All I know is that with the gaps at the moment, unless they are filled, Dr. Chisholm and I work on opposite sides of a drape on a patient, effectively. He can't do his job and I can't do mine, in the way that Canadians expect, without these medications.