Health Committee on April 23rd, 2026

[Sandra Hanna]

It was 20¢ per transaction.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Was this sustainable, in your view or in the view of your members?

[Sandra Hanna]

The unfortunate thing is that we view PrescribeIT as critical, foundational system infrastructure, not as an operational tool for pharmacies. E-prescribing is a critical tool that delivers value in terms of safety, efficiency and visibility across the system. This is health system infrastructure.

Pharmacies were disappointed by the decision to make them the only funders of a system that benefited so many different stakeholders, including the government, patients, other health systems and other health care providers. I think there were opportunities to rethink that model for more value.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Department officials from Health Canada explained that they made the decision at some point to kill the program. They set some time period because they wanted to give physicians and pharmacists time to pivot to whatever was coming next.

Do you know what's coming next? I understand that the program is wrapping up in six weeks.

[Sandra Hanna]

We understand that standards will be published, but we haven't been privy to any specifics in terms of what is next.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Do you imagine that you'll be able to adopt those standards for e-prescribing six weeks from now, not knowing what they are?

[Sandra Hanna]

I can't really comment. I'm not a technical expert.

To my knowledge, there aren't any currently available tools that could immediately sweep in, according to those standards, and be leveraged easily, efficiently and in a streamlined way by health care providers in this system today.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

We spoke with a family physician in St. Thomas, Ontario. His name is Dr. Bolzon. He's been quoted in the CBC about this as well. He and his practice partners, as well as other family physician friends of mine who have been using PrescribeIT, are expressing frustration. They feel like the rug has been pulled out from under them.

Does the expression of the rug being pulled out from under you resonate with you? Is that something you or your members might say about this?

[Sandra Hanna]

There was some frustration for the pharmacy sector for some time towards the end when the funding model shifted to pharmacies being expected to cover the cost of the full program.

The way we view it is that electronic prescribing is not just a nice-to-have; it's core health system infrastructure. Today, our health care system really relies on faxes, which limits safety, efficiency and visibility across the system. As we think about pharmaceutical sovereignty, tools like e-prescribing are not just about convenience. They're foundational to the kind of data visibility and interoperability we need to manage drug supply, anticipate shortages and respond to disruptions in real time. We don't have that today.

Perhaps the tool was treated as an operational tool. There are other opportunities for us to be thinking about tools like this more as system infrastructure.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

You mentioned faxes and how they're still very much used in health care.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one minute.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

PrescribeIT was brought in 10 years ago under the slogan “axe the fax”, which sounds familiar, but we still have faxes. Would you say “axe the fax” turned out to be an empty slogan?

[Sandra Hanna]

I still have hope.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Very good.

I'd like to turn my time over to Mr. Mazier.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

I'm good.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

You're good. I feel like I finished on the highest note I'm going to hit.

To wrap up, it seems to me that “axe the fax” sounds like an empty, rhyming, three-word slogan that the Liberal government used when spending $300 million on a program that was not fit for service, because physicians didn't adopt it. Even though pharmacists found it extremely critical and part of Canada's pharmaceutical sovereignty, the government has now put a bullet in the head of the program and pulled the rug out from under the prescribers and the pharmacists who were using it. I can't believe it's putting another $50 million into Canada Health Infoway—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Strauss.

Is that “axe the fax” or “axe the tax”? Which is it?

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

This is “axe the fax”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Okay. I'm sorry.

Ms. Sidhu, you have six minutes.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for your testimony.

My first question is for BioCanRx.

Clinical trials are often the first pathway for patients to access innovative therapies. In your view, how can modernizing Canada's clinical trials framework improve patients' access while also strengthening our domestic life sciences ecosystem?

[Stéphanie Michaud]

Thank you so much for this question. It's an excellent question.

Being able to execute clinical trials is absolutely critical for providing early access to novel therapies for patients in a variety of different disease areas. What is equally important, however, is to ensure that we support the pathway from the discovery of an exciting new and novel therapy to getting it to a clinical trial.

Most of the molecules and products that we're looking at are known as biologics. They can be viruses, they can be antibodies or they can be modified cellular therapies. Building up the regulatory dossier, especially for a first-in-human study, is the key to entry in delivering a clinical trial here in Canada. This is what my organization is involved in. We're supporting that bench-to-bedside translation to really increase the number of clinical trials in Canada and to increase access of those clinical trials to as many cancer patients in Canada as possible.

Ensuring that we have bench-to-bedside translational support that involves the coordination of biomanufacturing and that really enables our companies and our innovators to build up a regulatory dossier so they're able to knock on the door of Health Canada with a clinical trial application is the critical first step and a necessary condition to being able to execute a clinical trial in this country.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

From a pharmaceutical sovereignty perspective, what steps are needed to ensure that publicly funded research leads to both improved patient outcomes and long-term economic benefits in Canada?

[Stéphanie Michaud]

I would underscore the importance of being able to support translational research. Some of the statistics I cited in my opening remarks are quite stark.

We carried out a retrospective analysis over the time period from 2002 to March 2026 using a publicly available database, inquiring how many cancer immunotherapy trials had taken place in Canada. The number was well over 1,000, which situates us well, because we're able to attract quite a few pharmaceutical company trials in the country. When we further analyzed that dataset and asked how many of these were based on Canadian innovation, the numbers were quite stark: 3.4%, or approximately 50, over a 24-year period, which is a very poor performance.

BioCanRx has been in existence since 2015. We're responsible for half of those clinical trials, including very sophisticated, advanced therapeutics, such as CAR Ts and tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes, which we're currently delivering across the country.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

My last question follows up on that. After clinical trials, what advice can BioCanRx give to help us be self-sufficient in our country in domestic manufacturing?

[Stéphanie Michaud]

An initiative that we have focused on at BioCanRx is to examine what hospital-based manufacturing could look like—point-of-care manufacturing where the different products are being made in a closed system that is entirely GMP on the inside. This will require regulatory innovation from our regulators, and this is something we're actively engaging with them on.

This is not at all about lowering the bar of the safety and quality of the products we're making. It's about looking at different and alternative ways of making these products.

Being able to manufacture here in Canada increases the stickiness—if I can call it that—of these types of products. We work with a lot of companies, both large and small companies, but speaking specifically about the smaller Canadian companies, being able to manufacture here and access the expertise of our clinicians is critical to enhancing the capability of these companies to stay here, to continue to develop their products in Canada and to hopefully be able to secure supply in a pharmaceutical sovereignty strategy.