Madam Speaker, last Tuesday, I asked the health minister, on world AIDS day, about the situation concerning the approval of medication in Canada.
It is acknowledged the approval process for new drugs in Canada is not very competitive, and this is evidenced by the fact that two antiviral agents have been available for a year and a half in the United States, but are not available in Canada.
It has been estimated that the workload of the health protection branch, the unit that approves and market new drugs, is similar to what exists in the United States. However, here in Canada, we have one third of the resources available in the United States. I rose in the House several times to ask the health minister to review the process, to provide resources, and groups have proposed some solutions.
One of these solutions could be a joint approval process for new drugs. There is no rationale for a drug company that has an affiliate in Canada and one in the United States to submit the same research monographs in both countries, and this could be a joint process. This solution was proposed to the minister.
The second part of the solution has to do with the fact that the Health Protection Branch, now called the Therapeutic Products Branch, sees to it that different persons work on the analysis of the files at each stage of the process. With the Canadian AIDS Society and other organizations concerned with these issues, we think that one way to improve the drug products licensing process would be to mandate the same public servants from the beginning to the end of the process.
So I am asking the government to review this process. I would be very happy to work on it in a parliamentary committee, but members must know that Liberals have defeated a motion I put forward in the standing committee on health asking for the creation of a task force and a parliamentary committee on this issue.
So, I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice—who is not very knowledgeable in these matters, but very knowledgeable in other areas—will give me some hope.