Thank you very much, Chairperson.
Minister, thank you for attending today. It's very important that you are here. I regret that it's only one hour and I hope that we might encourage you to stay beyond that hour, because there will be very little time for questions.
You mentioned a number of things in your comments, but the issue that I'd like to focus on is drug safety. I'm sure you're aware that this is becoming a bigger and bigger issue in Canada. In fact, there were two major articles on this issue very recently, one in the Toronto Star, and one that came out yesterday in Maclean's magazine. Reading through that information as well as other information that we receive as MPs, it is clear that there is a lot of concern about the inadequacy of safety with the system in place.
I wonder if you could tell us how much money is spent on drug safety measures at Health Canada and why Health Canada is not investigating drug reaction reports and taking more concrete steps to prevent Canadians from getting sick or dying from adverse reactions.
These articles show that Canada is lagging far behind the United States, France, and other countries in the EU. For example, in the U.S. they've adopted plain language labeling, something which we've been talking about for a decade in Canada and still it hasn't happened. In other jurisdictions, clinical trial data enable people to see what information is being used to support a drug's approval. We're far behind in many of these aspects.
I think there's a great public concern about drug safety in this country. I wonder if you could tell us why Health Canada is not investigating drug reaction reports and taking concrete steps to prevent Canadians from getting sick or even dying from adverse reactions.