Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member opposite for her kind words and for her support on this issue, over a long time.
I agree with the member. The transparency in research and clinical trial research is a critical part of improving the data the drug companies use to get drugs approved in the first place.
They are very secretive about it. They refer to it as “commercial rights” or “trade secrets”, or whatever, but I do not believe it is.
When a pharmaceutical company hires someone to do a clinical trial, they normally ask the researcher to sign a contract, which is basically a gag order that says the company can stop the trial at any time and he or she must never talk about it again. If the trial is not going well for the drug, that is what they do. No one knows the trial was even started. If the trial shows the drug might be harming patients, they stop the trial and the researcher can never talk about it again, or never get work again as a researcher. They could do a number of trials like that on a drug until they finally find a researcher who gets them the positive result they want.
I agree with registering all trials, that it should be done, and that even if the trial is stopped early, all the data should be published.
I see the CMHA has requested or suggested that this go into Vanessa's law. I can only say that the Minister of Health is willing to consider amendments to Vanessa's law and I would be very pleased if that were put into the bill.