Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  Yes, there are seven of them now.

Health committee  You're right, there is a jurisdictional issue. As we all know, this is the practice of medicine, which is under provincial and territorial jurisdiction. I think the movement is that we're all trying to work together. The health care professional community, the industry, all levels of government, in terms of saying let's work together, collect as much information as we can; let's start somewhere where we can see how it works.

Health committee  In terms of the volume?

Health committee  I don't think we have anybody here who can talk about the cross-border drug issue.

Health committee  We could provide you with some information, if you wish, at a later date.

Health committee  Can I just add something to answer your question? We're constantly scanning the media and other reports to see what's out there. As you can well imagine, a number of events and reports come to us. We have people on the ground. For example, we have seven regional offices in the marketed health products.

Health committee  I'm going to ask Dr. Turner to respond to you, but I just wanted to say there are a number of issues related to mandatory reporting by health care professionals. In reporting adverse reactions, and particularly serious adverse reactions, it's more of an issue of quality rather than quantity, because you want to focus on the very serious areas.

Health committee  I will ask Dr Turner to answer your question.

Health committee  I would just add that the beauty of the new approach we're proposing is that you could attach the studies that Chris is talking about to the licence, so that you would be saying that based on the science and the sound science in the best interests of Canadians, we will issue a licence for a drug.

Health committee  You're absolutely right that it is mandatory for manufacturers to report adverse events, but not so for health care professionals or, obviously, Canadians. In the reporting of adverse events, there is a lot of underreporting, for a variety of reasons, going on in terms of barriers to reporting and communications channels.

Health committee  We're doing a lot more of it, at a variety of levels.

Health committee  Yes, we are much more proactive in trying to seek opportunities to share work with them and to share reports of post-market surveillance. If they're picking up any signals in those countries, then we would have this rapid sharing of information.

Health committee  It was done before, but we've recognized that it needs to be done much, much more proactively than ever before.

Health committee  So you're seeking the definition of post-market surveillance?