Mr. Speaker, the United States has generally had a more robust warning system for patients and doctors. I mentioned the black box warnings it has for the 200 drugs considered to be the most risky. By law, that warning is supposed to be handed to patients when they pick up their prescription.
The European Medicines Agency is ahead of us in some ways. It will often take a drug off the market before it is taken off the market in the U.S. or Canada. I mentioned Avandia, a diabetes drug that causes heart attacks and strokes. It was taken off the market in Europe in 2009. It is still on the market in the United States and Canada, with beefed-up warnings, but Europe seems to be a little more progressive.
Health Canada has recently begun communicating more with the best regulators in the world, which would include the FDA, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the U.K., and the European Medicines Agency, and sharing practices. Through them, it has gotten a lot of ideas on ways to handle these issues for Vanessa's law. I think if the House agrees to pass the bill, it will put Canada in the forefront and will increase communications with these other bodies, so that the drug companies cannot keep a drug on the market in one country, take it off in another, and pull the wool over the eyes of doctors and patients.