Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comments. Clearly, he is concerned about this issue, and I know Canadians, obviously, share a deep concern for health care.
I would be pleased to make officials from Health Canada available to the hon. member to provide to him a fuller explanation than can be offered through a late show debate, just to offer a full reassurance to him.
In a nutshell, having the appropriate regulatory oversight of medical device reprocessing is important to this government. For this reason, Health Canada will apply the existing federal Food and Drugs Act and medical device regulations to incoming licence applications from commercial reprocessors of single-use devices. In doing so, it will hold reprocessed devices to comparable standards of safety and effectiveness as new devices, and will subject commercial reprocessors to the same regulatory requirements as manufacturers of new devices.
The recent passage of Vanessa's Law has also strengthened Canada's already strong drug and medical device safety system.