Mr. Chair, obviously it is very important that we keep and maintain the robust drug approval process that we have. In terms of speedier drug approvals, I only meant to say that we have provided resources, starting last year with $190 million over five years, I believe, to make sure that we have the resources to be able to approve drugs within about 300 to 350 days rather than drugs having to wait over a couple of years to be approved. We want to make sure that business comes to Canada and they actually apply to have their drugs approved here. It is important for us.
But it is also important to ensure as rigorous a process as there is for pre-approval. There ought to be a rigorous process for post-approval in terms of the surveillance. That is missing at this point. I have been talking to my own department for the last several weeks to make sure that we add post-approval requirements for the drug companies to report to us any information and data they collect, and that we also have some surveillance ability and opportunity to be able to see how those drugs are doing after they have been approved, so that we do not have a situation of a drug being utilized over 10 years and finding out after 10 years that people have been having problems from year one.
It is important. I have actually been discussing that with my own department to make sure that we get there.