Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to our witnesses for being here today to discuss the Auditor General's report on regulating pharmaceutical drugs.
I was pleased to note that the Auditor General examined many important areas of regulating pharmaceutical drugs, including transparency and timeliness in communicating information about clinical drug trials, conflicts of interest, timeliness of safety assessment recommendations for marketed drugs, and how Health Canada applies risk-based standard operating procedures. Along with Health Canada's other drug regulation activities, these are all important areas to Canadians and to Canadian drug manufacturers and suppliers.
In this context, could the deputy minister provide this committee with some additional details on how Health Canada regulates prescription drugs to ensure that it is putting the health and safety of Canadians first?