We certainly look forward to seeing that information, because there's no question that when you analyze this issue, we're lagging far behind the drug safety measures in, for example, the U.S. and Europe.
I'd now like to ask you a second question concerning your recent decision to intervene and, in effect, ignore the experts in your own department who had given approval under the special access program for the SALOME trial in Vancouver. One of the things that really bothered me about this is that both you as minister and your office publicly said on a number of occasions that the SAP is for rare diseases or terminal illnesses. According to your own website, “...practitioners treating patients with serious or life-threatening conditions when conventional therapies have failed, are unsuitable, or unavailable.” Now, that's clearly within the realm of what the SALOME trial was about.
It was also very disturbing that you repeatedly referred to illicit drugs, when in actual fact, diacetylmorphine is actually a clinically produced medication. I'm aware that Health Canada, before coming to its decision under SAP, sought the advice of Michael Lester, an independent expert who has specialized in opiate dependence treatment for nearly 20 years. In fact, in a recent report in 2013 that he did for Health Canada, he called prescription heroin “a promising treatment of last resort” for this population, noting that there is no other next step for people who have failed multiple treatment attempts with methadone.
It is all very disturbing that this intervention was made at a political level, particularly in light of the information I've given you. So I guess my question is, why have you allowed politics to trump evidence-based medicine when the process was in place? Clearly, a decision was made based on expert evaluation, and as a result, because of your political intervention, I would say that people's lives are at risk and a very vulnerable population is left hanging out there with basically a political decision made by yourself. Maybe you can answer for that.