In terms of data protection, we fully comply with the TRIPS agreement. Extending data protection seeks to encourage companies to do research and clinical trials on already existing drugs to see whether or not they could be used for other purposes.
I personally think that it would make sense for us to somewhat extend the data protection period. The major difference between the European Union and Canada is that, in Canada, we often confuse data protection and data secrecy. Health Canada always requires data secrecy on all clinical data it obtains, which is unacceptable. That prevents other researchers from having access to clinical data that are available. And in many cases, those data have been obtained through massive public funding. I don't have a problem with protecting data for intellectual property so that another company does not market something else, but I think that making them secret to prevent researchers from having access to them is unacceptable.