Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier.
It is a pleasure to rise today on behalf of my constituents of Surrey North to speak to Bill C-17. Before I do, I would like to say that I had a chance to attend a graduation ceremony last night at Queen Elizabeth Secondary School where 310 young people graduated. I want to congratulate them and their parents for a job well done. It just so happens that Queen Elizabeth is my former school. I graduated from there many years ago. I took the red eye so I could speak to this important bill this afternoon.
Bill C-17 is a step in the right direction toward tackling a far-reaching problem. After years of pressure from the NDP, health care practitioners, and health care organizations, I am glad to see that the government is finally taking action to address many issues related to drug safety. However, while the bill is a definite step in the right direction, it does not go far enough in addressing some of the key gaps in Canadian drug safety legislation.
I am sure that all of my colleagues in the House would agree that all Canadians deserve to have the information they need to make informed decisions about their health care. Furthermore, I am sure we can all agree that all Canadians expect their health care providers to have all the information necessary to make the best decisions possible about the care they are providing, including information related to the medications they are prescribing. In reality, Canadians and their health care providers are being left in the dark when it comes to important decisions related to their health care. I can provide numerous examples for the House.
In 2011, the Auditor General warned that consumers were not receiving safety warnings about pharmaceutical drugs fast enough, because Health Canada is slow to act on potential issues it identifies. People sometimes have to wait more than two years before Health Canada completes a drug safety review of a product already on the market and before it provides updated information on the risks. This is a backwards process. Canadians deserve to have full information about pharmaceuticals before they make the choice to use them. One of the most basic principles we teach our children is to think before they act. The process Health Canada follows right now seems to encourage the exact opposite of that: use a pharmaceutical first and think about the potential consequences or side-effects later. This needs to change.
It is an unacceptable statistic that most risks associated with prescription drugs are identified after they are introduced to consumers. Almost one-fifth of new active substances approved by Health Canada between 1995 to 2010 were later given serious safety warnings. This further illustrates the backwards process currently being followed.
If that does not provide enough proof that drug safety legislation needs to be urgently strengthened, then let us look at the major drug safety incidents we witnessed in 2013.
How about the diluted chemotherapy drugs given to over 1,200 patients in Ontario and New Brunswick? How about the recall of the birth control pill Alysena 28? It took a full week before this recall was issued, and in the meantime, many Canadian women were exposed to unwanted pregnancies. If that is not enough, five other popular birth control pills were recalled and had serious safety warnings issued about them. The list goes on, but I think members are beginning to see a pattern here.
Canadians deserve better. They deserve to be presented with the full information they need to make informed decisions about their health. They should be able to trust that they will be protected from drugs that would put their well-being at risk.
It is for all these reasons that I, along with my colleagues, am glad to see this bill. Bill C-17 is a good step toward the comprehensive drug safety plan Canada so badly needs. Canadians should have assurance that their medications are safe for use, and they should have access to plain-language information on why their medications are safe.
Bill C-17, in its current form, would allow the government to recall drugs or order the distributor to take corrective action to remedy a problem with a drug. It is a scary thought that up until now, Canada has not had mandatory recalls for drugs. This means that even if a drug posed serious health risks to Canadians, the government could not force the manufacturer to remove it from the Canadian market. This aspect of the bill would give the government the power to protect Canadians when drug safety issues arise.
Bill C-17 would also give the Minister of Health the power to order a manufacturer or importer to modify the label of a drug to update the side effects or health risks associated with it. It would also require manufacturers to update Canadian information about the risks associated with a drug, even if the safety risks were discovered in another country. These are all important steps on the road to ensuring that Canadians have as much information as possible about the drugs they are about to use.
However, while we on this side of the House support the legislation, there is still more that needs to be done to improve drug safety in our country. This legislation still leaves many gaps that must be addressed.
For example, although Bill C-17 would improve labeling, it would not set up better communications systems between doctors, pharmacists, and patients for communicating and reporting risks. Likewise it would not increase access to public information about drug trials, additional drug testing, and why medications are or are not considered safe. While it would include provisions regarding reporting adverse drug reactions, there is no mention of a follow-up by Health Canada to these reports.
There are more steps that need to be taken and more issues that need to be addressed to create the comprehensive drug safety plan that is needed in our country. Comprehensive drug safety legislation should include optimal prescribing practices to ensure that drugs are used only when medically necessary and for the correct reasons and that negative side effects and drug interactions are avoided as much as possible.
Canadians also deserve access to clinical trial results. The reporting of all trial results, both good and bad, would lead to better-informed health care decisions. Although since 2007 Health Canada has encouraged clinical trial sponsors to make their data available, it has no authority to compel this transparency, which is a vital component of a comprehensive approach to drug safety.
I am glad to see this critical step toward improving drug safety being taken. Bill C-17 has the potential to benefit all Canadians in a concrete way and to especially benefit vulnerable populations, such as children and seniors. The bill, in its current form, lays the groundwork for even more concrete measures to be taken to strengthen our drug safety legislation. It is my sincere hope that the government will carefully consider amendments that my colleagues will be proposing at committee that will strengthen the bill.
I would like to talk about that a little bit. We have seen over the last two or three years that the government has brought in legislation that has gone to committee stage. We have seen over and over that the opposition has made concrete, valid amendments. Unfortunately, the Conservatives do not seem to want to take any sort of advice, either from the opposition or from experts who have testified before the committees. I would urge the Conservatives to take into consideration amendments that will be offered at the committee stage to further improve this very important measure.