Madam Chair, I want to share my time with my colleague, the hon. member for Parkdale—High Park.
I would like to stress that Health Canada has adopted an important measure to strengthen its capacity to monitor marketed products. The creation of a new marketed health products directorate, an organization exclusively responsible for the surveillance of marketed health products, clearly illustrates the increased importance of this activity within the department.
The directorate will have initial funding of approximately $10 million. Of this $10 million, $7 million is new funding provided in the 2002-03 fiscal year to strengthen post-market surveillance activities in the department.
The new organization will consolidate and continue the work previously undertaken in different areas of Health Canada. It will support further improvements in capacity to identify safety hazards and communicate any product related risks to health care professionals and the public in a more timely manner.
Canadians expect drugs and other health products to which they have access to be both safe and effective. Health Canada is the federal authority responsible for pre-market approval of drugs, based on the exhaustive data provided by the manufacturers demonstrating that, during clinical trials, their products were safe, effective and of high quality.
I can assure the House that we take this responsibility very seriously. Canada, following in the steps of other countries, is placing greater importance on the surveillance of the risks and benefits of marketed drugs. We realize today that our marketed products surveillance activities are as important as our rigorous pre-market approval process.
Surveillance of marketed products provides information on the safety and effectiveness of drugs used in real situations. To facilitate reporting by health professionals and consumers of undesirable effects and incidents related to drugs, Health Canada has set up new toll-free phone and fax numbers.
Health Canada has been in discussions with the U.S. food and drug administration about gaining access to its data on adverse drug reactions. Data from the United States is particularly useful because of its considerably larger population base. International collaborations like this one augment domestic data and help us to identify public health and safety risks as quickly as possible.
To improve how health data communicates health risks, an electronic mailing list has been created to electronically disseminate the adverse reaction news letter and advisories for health professionals and consumers. This news letter, which has recently been redesigned to present new safety information in a more user friendly manner, is also now being distributed to physicians as a separate attachment to the Canadian Medical Association Journal.