Thank you very much, Chair.
Interestingly enough, as you know, we had some probing questions with respect to drug approvals in Canada, and, as I said previously, the minister specifically had an opportunity here with respect to this legislation because it does talk about standing up the new Canadian drug agency, and there certainly was an opportunity to have some safeguards around the Canadian drug agency and drug approvals in Canada.
Perhaps now I could ask the officials about the drug approval process in Canada, because, quite frankly, we've already established that Canadians don't have access to primary care. I think everybody out there watching knows clearly that it's hard to get a prescription if you don't have access to a physician to write you one, which, again, this government has failed to address. They've made it clear historically that they would provide 7,500 new doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners to Canada, even though we're missing about 30,000 family doctors.
That being said, one thing that's going to plague Canadians in the not so distant future and is plaguing them now—I spoke about this previously—is the number of days from global first launch to public reimbursement.
There were 460 new medicines launched from 2012 to the end of 2021. My colleague from the NDP referenced New Zealand as a beacon. Interestingly enough, in this particular study, New Zealand had the longest time for approval, at 1398 days.
Could the officials tell me who had the second-longest time for approval of medications in this group of countries? Anybody?