Mr. Chair, I will start by indicating that Health Canada has taken and continues to take the issue of drug shortages very seriously. We have certainly seen the challenges increase over the past decade. The challenges are of a global nature with supply chains. In some cases, the active pharmaceutical ingredient is coming from just a single supplier. We've been working domestically to strengthen our capability in Health Canada—with Stefania's team and with colleagues here—to have a focused organizational unit and task force working to address it.
There has also been work globally, and Stefania co-chairs an international group of regulators looking at this issue. Certainly, as we saw in the pandemic, the importance of supporting domestic biomanufacturing is a critical priority and one in which the government has invested significantly to attract and support businesses and develop manufacturing operations in Canada.
We routinely work with—and we recently updated, in 2021—regulatory authorities to further facilitate addressing drug shortages. My colleagues can speak to that. As Stefania said, at any point in time we could be having supply challenges with 10% to 15% of drugs, but we work actively with multiple suppliers to avoid, to the greatest extent possible, those having impacts at the clinician and importantly at the patient and care provider/parent level.
As well, we have worked to look at novel ways of addressing it, including, during the pandemic, by establishing a critical drug reserve with provinces and territories.
We are fully engaged in addressing this and in using regulatory flexibilities to help ensure that Canadians get the supply of drugs they need.