Thank you.
I guess we can take it that the government House leader, who controls the House agenda, for whatever reason made a decision to wait on this bill for six months. I'm glad we are dealing with it now, and I'm sure the committee will go through the bill very carefully. We have witnesses to hear and I think they're going to be pretty good witnesses. We'll go through the bill clause by clause.
If I have some more time I would like to ask a couple of general questions.
As you've noted, you are open to amendments, which we very much appreciate. One of them has to do with the issue of overall transparency and the question of drug safety. We have to begin at the beginning and go right through the process.
There's the question of transparency in clinical trials, for example, the need to publish both positive and negative regulatory decisions, the need for Health Canada to publish the rationale for decisions they make concerning whether drugs are approved for sale or refused for safety reasons. I think the whole issue of transparency and people needing to know, whether it's the general public or whether it's researchers or clinicians in the field, is being raised about whether or not the bill could do a better job, and also including the results of clinical trials, including post-market studies and adverse drug reactions reported by drug manufacturers.
There are some elements of that in the bill, but we wonder whether it could go further. I wonder if you could give us a general response as to whether or not that's an area that could be looked at in ensuring greater transparency and greater reporting so we have the full spectrum from beginning to end.