Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, witnesses.
I will admit that I'm not a regular at this committee, but this has been probably one of the most interesting and forward-looking sessions I've been at in a long while.
I might say that I've just come back from meetings in the United States—Canada-U.S. interparliamentary association meetings—at which their fiscal cliff was on the agenda, and their whole health care system versus ours, etc. There's a real fear in the United States, given the need for the government to get its deficit under control, and there's some of that here as well.
There is a fear in many sectors that R and D will be cut back, and I think we can see, Madam Chair, in listening to the presentations, that it would not be a good idea for us to do so. Two things seem to come out of what has been said.
One of you—I believe it was you, Dr. Plummer—mentioned that we need to refit our drug approval process and that “tailored for personalized intervention” needs to be done faster. Someone said that. The other was that we need an R and D strategy that incorporates nanotechnology, etc. What needs to be done to accomplish those two things?