Health Committee on April 21st, 2026

[Michael Green]

The data is owned by the provinces and territories. This is the actual prescribing information that went through the system. The information is the property of the provinces and territories. We built interfaces so that it could go into their provincial drug information systems.

In addition, we have information that we've gathered on the statistics of the use of the system. Certainly, we would make this information available to provincial partners as appropriate, in terms of privacy laws and so on.

A lot of information was gathered during the process that we can use to inform future programs.

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

I will follow up on what my colleague asked earlier about the adoption, or the lack thereof.

I understand that there were a number of change orders submitted throughout the implementation of the system. How quickly were those responded to?

I imagine that if pharmacists are not the issue with adoption, then it's on the other side of serving patients, so it's the physicians and clinicians. I wonder if the constant change order delays were part of the reason that the adoption wasn't very high.

[Michael Green]

Change orders can take many different forms. Some can be implemented very quickly. Others, which may require software changes, could be more difficult to implement. However, I don't think any change orders actually restricted the provision of the service.

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

I have another follow-up question on what my colleague asked about the accuracy of the system.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one minute.

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Do you have enough data to extrapolate from to say that the way it's delivered will make prescriptions more accurate and be less prone to mistakes or abuse? Is there not enough?

[Michael Green]

Yes, we certainly—

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

There is enough data.

[Michael Green]

We definitely have the information. We can provide performance data. The system integrity was there with privacy, security and ensuring that the right drug got to the right patient in the correct dosage and so on.

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

I don't know if you measure by the top whatever percentile or 98%. Could you table some of this information with the committee as well?

[Michael Green]

We did regular reporting. We maintained a dashboard for the system. We have the information, if the committee requires it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Chair, I have a point of order.

Despite that performance, I would seek unanimous consent for the following motion. I move: “That the committee summon the CEO, president and chair of Canada Health Infoway, in addition to Telus Health, to appear for a total of two hours together prior to May 6, 2026, to testify on PrescribeIT.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I'm sorry, Mr. Mazier. I didn't get that motion.

Clearly, we just had Telus Health—

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

I'm just seeking unanimous consent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I know, but I have to know what you're asking to have unanimous consent for.

I seek unanimous consent—

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

It's to summon the CEO.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

It's the CEO of Telus. Yes.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

It's, “summon the CEO, president and chair of Canada Health Infoway, in addition to Telus Health, to appear for a total of two hours together prior to May 6, 2026, to testify on PrescribeIT.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

It's for unanimous consent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Is there unanimous consent for this?

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

It will be duly noted in our minutes.

I need to ask one question of Mr. Green, please.

I am not trying to be ridiculous, Mr. Green. I may not be intelligent enough to understand what's going on.

I'm a physician. Before I prescribe anything for my patients, I try to find out what's wrong with them. I check them out. I do an analysis. I look at their past history. I examine them physically.

If one was going to embark on a very expensive proposition such as this, wouldn't one do an analysis to note that every province has different sets of information systems and that pharmacists have four different ones in each province? Wouldn't that have come into consideration before we embarked on the whole program? Wouldn't one have done that kind of analysis first and foremost?

Can I ask, was that analysis not done? I'm hearing that this is obviously what went wrong.

Many jurisdictions had many different ways of communicating, getting their e-prescriptions and doing that. Couldn't we have checked that out before we embarked on trying to find a generic way to move this forward, instead of spending all of that time and money to find out it wasn't going to work? I could say the operation was successful, but the patient died.

I'm suggesting that this work could have been done in terms of a good analysis before you launched the program. Was that done?

[Michael Green]

We did considerable research before we launched the program, including consulting with other jurisdictions that had national e-prescribing services in place. On our team, we had clinicians, pharmacists and technical people involved in the program. I think they made every effort to ensure that due diligence was performed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Did it not tell you that it was not going to work because of all the different types of systems in every different province? Could that not have been the first step: to try to make them talk to each other, to try to make them work? Then we could embark on this extensive project after that. Was that ever done?

[Michael Green]

As I mentioned, we reported regularly on progress; we reviewed the progress of the system.