Mr. Speaker, I will begin today by telling members about a child who is sick and whose parents have been told that there is a promising treatment, but it is not yet available in Canada. It is not because it does not work, and not because it is not safe, but because the paperwork has not caught up. The system was not designed with that child in mind.
As a father of three beautiful girls, I cannot imagine the sense of desperation that parents would have in that moment. I definitely feel it imperative to support the bill before us and do everything we can to prevent parents from having to go through this in those life-changing moments. This is the problem that my colleague for Thunder Bay—Rainy River is trying to solve through his private member's bill, Bill C-265.
I am proud to rise today in strong support of this bill, brought forward by my friend and colleague, who is an ER physician and a member of this House. He understands, better than most of us, what it means when a patient's time starts to run out.
This is not a partisan issue. This is about whether we are ready to put patients first, empower clinicians and help reduce barriers to saving lives.
I bring a particular lens to this bill. I have never been a physician, but before coming to this House, many years ago, I spent time working in medical research ethics at the University of London, St. George's Medical School, where I helped oversee more than 500 clinical trials and research projects. I sat in review meetings, I read the research protocols and pored over the applications. I have seen what it takes for promising treatments to move through the system, and more importantly, how long it takes.
I know what rigour looks like, and I know what evidence-based medicine looks like. I can tell members, with confidence, that this bill does not cut corners. Instead, this bill would cut red tape. Those are two very different things.
I have also seen the other side and spoken with families who were told to wait, who were told to be patient, and who watched their loved one deteriorate while a treatment that might have helped sat across a border or in a regulatory queue. That experience stays with us. It is why I wholeheartedly support this bill, and it brought me here today to this chamber to say that we can and must do better.
I will describe what our current system looks like in practice. A doctor, let us say a pediatric oncologist in the world-renowned SickKids Hospital in Toronto, has a nine-year-old patient. She has a rare form of cancer. Her family has exhausted the standard treatments. Her parents are desperate. Her doctor knows about a treatment being used successfully in, say, Europe. It has passed clinical trials abroad. It is being administered to children just like her in Germany, France and the United Kingdom, but it is not yet approved here in Canada. The doctor goes through the special access pathway and fills out forms. She waits, she follows up, she waits some more, she follows up some more, and weeks pass. The child, in that time, is getting sicker and sicker.
Now, picture the same scenario at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, which is one of the top cancer hospitals in the world. Its specialists are seeing the same thing: cutting-edge science at their fingertips, but bureaucracy stands between the treatment and the patient.
This is not hypothetical. This is happening right now in hospitals across the country. Delays are holding up access to life-saving medication, and the impact is not just medical; it is financial and emotional. Families are spending their savings travelling abroad for treatments that are available only elsewhere. Parents take unpaid leave. Siblings grow up in the shadow of a crisis. Our system has the power to ease this, but has not yet.
What would Bill C-265 actually do? I will break this down in plain language, as I understand it, because this matters to every Canadian, not just those who work in medicine.
Right now, if a doctor needs to access a treatment that is not yet fully approved in Canada, they have to navigate a slow, complex, case-by-case process every single time. Bill C-265 would change that by creating a pre-approved list of therapeutic products for special access. Think of it as a curated catalogue of treatments that have already been vetted, that have already been shown to work in other rigorous health systems, and that can be accessed more quickly when a doctor determines a patient needs them. Think of it as a pre-cleared lane at the border. The work has already been done, and the safety checks have already been run. When a doctor needs to act, especially in an emergency, they should not have to start from scratch: They can use their clinical judgment to determine what treatment is in the best interest of the patient.
Critically, the safeguards are in the bill. The bill would not allow just anyone to access any drug any time they feel like it. The health minister would retain the ability to restrict access for specific uses and to specify limitations on practitioners and the settings for those usages. The minister could add new products and remove any of them the moment safety concerns arise.
The integrity of our drug approval system would also be protected. The bill would not allow big pharma to circumvent Health Canada's rigorous regulatory approval process. The bill would give the minister the ability to, on reasonable grounds, ask a manufacturer of a therapeutic product for an explanation if they suspect they are trying to circumvent the regulatory approval process, and could remove that product from the list immediately if the reasons given are deemed unsatisfactory.
The bill would also bring real transparency to the process. There would be a public list of approved products, updated regularly, with annual reporting on access timelines and outcomes. Both practitioners and manufacturers would be required to report. This is accountability built right into the heart of the legislation, not as an afterthought.
One of the things I love most about the bill is that it would trust doctors to be doctors. We train our physicians for over a decade and put them through the most rigorous education and examination in the world, then in the moment of a medical urgency or emergency, we ask them to stop, file paperwork and then wait. When lives hang in the balance, they should be empowered in those moments to do what they do best. Imagine if we asked a firefighter rushing into a burning building to first complete a request form before grabbing the hose. Bill C-265 would empower physicians to use their clinical judgment, especially in emergencies, while still operating within a clear, accountable framework.
The bill includes another important proposed provision: for the health minister to issue letters of authorization for emergency access to new drugs. This would be for emergency situations, when a patient's life is at stake. The letter of authorization would be used by weighing the benefits and risks to the patient if the drug is used or if it is not used, along with all available medical evidence. In cases where the information available may not be conclusive enough, the minister could grant authorization if two practitioners who are expert clinicians with specialized knowledge agree that the use of the therapeutic product is in the best interest of the patient.
If requests are denied, the bill would require written justification of the minister's decision. The bill also outlines limitations of the minister's ability to refuse a letter of authorization, and it includes an emergency hotline to help practitioners access this process at all times. This would mean no more silence, no more wondering why, and greater transparency for doctors, patients and families.
Let me give another example of why this matters. Rare diseases are, by definition, rare. There may be only a few hundred Canadians living with a specific condition. Because the market is small, pharmaceutical companies do not always prioritize getting approval here first. They go to the United States or Europe. Full approval in Canada comes years later, if at all, so a parent in Halifax, Saskatoon or Ottawa watches their child suffer, knowing that a treatment exists, has been proven and is being used right now in other countries but cannot be accessed here. That parent is not asking for miracles; they are asking for fairness, for their child to get the same chance as child born in another country gets.
Bill C-265 would give Canadian patients that fighting chance. It says that if the evidence and international approval are there, we would not make patients wait while the system catches up.
I want to take a quick moment to recognize that it took a lot of work to get this bill to the floor of the House of Commons. Our colleague, the member of Parliament for Thunder Bay—Rainy River, did not write the bill on the back of a napkin. He consulted extensively, talking to patients, families, physicians, emergency room doctors, oncologists, and specialists in rare diseases, and he engaged with legal experts, ethicists and regulatory professionals. This is what good legislation looks like. It is built from the ground up and shaped by the people who live with the consequences every single day.
I also want to acknowledge the patients and advocates who pushed for this change. I give kudos to them. This bill belongs to them.
Good health policy is always a balance. We want to be rigorous. We want to make sure that we give Canadians safe, proven and accountable medications. We also want to be compassionate. We want to be fast enough that the system does not make the decision for the patient before the doctor even gets a chance to.