Madam Chair, as a Bloc Québécois member, I am going to have to put another fly in the ointment: the on-line sale of drugs in Canada is not exclusively under federal jurisdiction.
On the contrary. While the federal government has the power to legislate on e-business, Quebec and the provinces have jurisdiction over legislation governing medical practices and the supervision of professions.
As hon. members are certainly aware, when it comes to child care, parental leave and a number of other areas, Quebec has a big head start. This is also the case with our measures to control drug sales, and we have taken steps to prevent on-line drugs sales to Americans. There was a good reason for these measures. It is very important, because the most vulnerable members of society are involved, such as the elderly, who generally suffer from chronic conditions, and these are the ones most likely to make use of Internet pharmacies. They have no way of knowing that the medication prescribed to them is appropriate when combined with something they might be prescribed later on.
I did a quick survey to see what we were talking about. In March or April, the Standing Committee on Health met with pharmacists filling prescriptions online who spoke highly of their profession and their products. They said that, according to their estimates, they get about three million orders per year. This means that, every year, three million people get their prescriptions filled online by Internet pharmacies. So, for fun, I did the math.
According to a study on this subject, Canadian medical practitioners signing prescriptions, such as physicians in Manitoba or British Columbia where Internet pharmacies are currently operating, get $10 per prescription they co-sign. These physicians are licensed to work in Quebec, the provinces and across Canada. So they are part of the health care system.
So, for fun, I calculated what co-signing, signing and verifying 3 million prescriptions work out to. At only five minutes per prescription, that works out to 15 million minutes. If we divide that figure by 20 minutes, which is the approximate time it takes a physician to examine each patient, how many more patients could practitioners see? The answer is an additional 83,333 patients per year. That is a lot of patients at a time when waiting lists are a serious issue.
We complain about the waiting lists and the fact that we cannot meet much of the demand. Yet, we allow physicians to sign prescriptions for people they have never seen or met and about whose true physical condition they have no idea. Is this what we want? I cannot understand this. In this day and age of globalization, clearly, some things need to be considered with regard to the Internet.
Yet if we need to be extra cautious about anything, it is health care and prescriptions. Only physicians are qualified to make a diagnosis. They still need to see the patient to do that. Otherwise, how can they make a proper diagnosis?
Once in my life I went to see a doctor. I was taken aback to find the doctor was a woman. I went into her office and described my symptoms. She did not examine me. She decided that I had something and she was way off the mark. I left her office insulted and angry that she had considered me a number and had paid no attention to my fears.
If we accept the principle of Internet pharmacies we accept fewer services to the public and agree to lowering the quality of interaction among doctors, pharmacies and patients.
This cannot be allowed to happen. Most people with chronic disease are old, defenceless, alone and isolated and with no one to depend on. So they trust their doctor or pharmacist. How can they count on them when they are Americans on the other side of the border and have never seen them?
I do not want to be mean to our fellow citizens on the other side of the border, but we know that, in the United States, the slightest thing leads to court proceedings if rights are deemed infringed. I do not think the Canadian health care system can afford such proceedings simply because care was not taken and the system was implemented without the appropriate precautions. It is too dangerous.
In the Standing Committee on Health, we were told that some people sent their prescription to Canada, regardless of where the Internet site is located—Manitoba, I think—and the Internet pharmacy gets it countersigned by a physician. Then, if the drug is not sold in this country, they send the prescription to another country over which we have no control as far as drug manufacturing, packaging and quality are concerned. That country sends the person's drugs to him or her. So the party responsible throughout is the Internet distributor. This is alarming to me as a woman, and as someone whose mother might one day have access to such services.
I do not think that we want to subscribe to a system with so many loopholes, one that is so lax and does not care about the people it serves. They are the ones who should always be the focus of our concerns. Increasingly, we are realizing that it is not the individual that counts, but profits. As a woman and as an MP, this angers me a great deal. As legislators, we need to focus primarily on the needs of our fellow citizens, of those whom we serve and represent. Those citizens are not across the U.S. border, they are Quebeckers and Canadians who need services and need our attention.
I hope the minister will take the necessary decisions on this matter and will use extreme caution before making any decisions.