Mr. Chair, I thank the member for her question.
It's true that our powers are somewhat limited with respect to our ability to request a change on…
the monograph, the labels. We do have limited powers to demand or impose label updates on products as we see them. We end up working in collaboration with the companies in order to negotiate the sorts of changes we would like to see.
The process to obtain an update on instructions for a drug is now being negotiated with the industry.
We find that this works for us. Obviously we exert a fair amount of influence over industry to comply with our requests.
We have the power, if we feel that industry is not complying, to simply issue a warning saying we've asked the industry to do x and they've declined. Oftentimes that's enough to have industry come into compliance with our recommendations. We do have powers beyond just the negotiation.
In Bill C-51, a previous piece of legislation, there were some proposals that would have allowed us to go beyond simply working in a collaborative nature with industry, to one that would be imposing our direction upon them. Given what happened with that piece of legislation, we are taking a look at what other steps we can take to ensure the regulatory framework we have allows us to move as quickly as possible.
The one problem I would acknowledge with the current process is that it does take a bit of time in terms of negotiating rather than simply directing.