Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the chance to speak today to Bill C-265, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act regarding a list of therapeutic products pre-approved for special access. The bill attempts to address a very real and human problem. I laud the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River for bringing it forward so we can have the collective opportunity to think about and act on this important issue.
As we have heard this afternoon, across Canada there are patients facing serious illnesses, rare diseases, aggressive cancers and rapidly deteriorating conditions whose approved treatment options either have failed or simply do not exist. In those moments, no one cares about ideology or partisanship. What they need is hope. They want time. They are looking for options, for anything that might help when all other doors appear to be closed. That is the purported purpose of the existing Health Canada special access program. Under the program, health care professionals can request access to therapies that are not yet approved in Canada for patients with serious or life-threatening conditions. In many cases, the program has in fact provided compassionate access to potentially life-saving treatments.
Bill C-265 seeks to streamline parts of that process by creating a publicly maintained list of therapeutic products that could qualify for faster access under certain circumstances. There is merit in studying this proposal carefully at committee, and I am pleased to rise today to support doing exactly that, because government systems should work efficiently to respond to real human needs. When bureaucracy creates unnecessary delays for critically ill patients, we have a responsibility in this place to ask whether those processes can be improved while maintaining proper safeguards.
I believe we should also recognize the difficult realities faced by patients living with rare diseases. Members of my immediate family live with a rare disease called hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsies, or HNPP. We are lucky that it was diagnosed within a reasonable time and has so far had minimal impact on our lives. However, many rare disease patients spend years searching for diagnoses, specialists and treatment options.
Families become experts themselves because they have no other choice. They monitor clinical trials around the world. They follow developments in the United States and elsewhere. They advocate tirelessly for access to therapies that may still be working their way through Canada's approval process even though they are available elsewhere. For patients in these situations, time matters. It is frustrating, terrifying and a host of other emotions to watch someone we love suffer and in some cases die while bureaucratic rules put up roadblock after obstacle, barrier, impediment and hurdle.
This issue is particularly relevant for many of our communities on Vancouver Island and across rural Canada. Patients without family doctors already face long travel times for specialized care. Families in rural areas often experience delays in accessing diagnostics, specialists and advanced treatments. Whether we or someone we love is fighting a fast-moving illness, every additional layer of delay can feel overwhelming. Bill C-265 seeks to address that concern by allowing certain therapies to be placed on a pre-approved list for faster consideration under the program.
The idea deserves thoughtful examination, and many people in the House, including the proposer of the bill, have talked about the issues that need to be studied at committee, so I am not going to go through them here. What I am going to do is thank my colleague across the way for taking the time to really think about what we can do in this place to help real families and real people across the country to live full, better lives not spent chasing therapies they may or may not be able to access in the long run.