Health committee  We did a customs blitz on the mail centres, just so we could have some statistical data on what kinds of parcels and drugs are coming across the border, and we're calculating that data right now, so I can't give you any information on that. But to follow up on Meena's point, it i

Health committee  We primarily use our own inspectors, but we also have alliances, and we rely on information we get from coroners' offices, from the colleges of pharmacy that were talked about, and through our linkages with the RCMP and other regulatory authorities. We have 100 of our own inspect

Health committee  As we talked about, as part of our inspection program, we go into different companies and verify that they have a system in place to do the adverse reaction reporting that's required. We also work with Chris's group. Remember we talked about signals? If a signal comes in and requ

Industry committee  That's a good question. As I said in my remarks, the regulations are 50 years old.

Industry committee  We're moving. We're moving forward on that. It's really the tools we need to give to our inspectors, a better suite of tools to be able to do their job. We're looking at the legislative side and we're looking at the non-legislative side as well. On the non-legislative side, we'r

Industry committee  Have we changed one of the regulations?

Industry committee  No. They're coming in through a suite. It has to come in.... It's definitely a priority, and we're doing a lot of work on that area.

Industry committee  Yes.

Industry committee  I would say that in the last couple of years we've probably had five or six. We're taking a look at that because we've had some success and some lack of success. We're taking a look at whether they are an effective tool and at the resources it takes to actually do a prosecution,

Industry committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and committee members. My name is Diana Dowthwaite. I am director general of the inspectorate with the health products and food branch of Health Canada. One of the ways in which Health Canada fulfills its mandate is by playing the role of regulator.

Public Safety committee  I would give the same answer as well. We have a number of investigations that are underway with respect to potential counterfeit drugs, but, again, we turn them over to the RCMP for prosecution.

Public Safety committee  There are different processes. We have a phone number that we put at the bottom of advisories to alert consumers that they can phone in on a specific complaint. We have another process called an adverse drug reaction reporting system. It's in another part of the branch that I'm i

Public Safety committee  That's where it's really hard. That's one of the difficulties in trying to come up with a substantive number of counterfeit products in Canada. It's very difficult to make a direct linkage between a counterfeit product and a death, because sometimes it could be linked to it or it

Public Safety committee  We can't do it for all kinds of reasons that I talked about: because the testing has to be done of the drugs; because you have to be able to do lab analysis to find out if they're actually counterfeited drugs; because you have to do a lot of research to find out where they've com

Public Safety committee  Good morning. My name is Diana Dowthwaite. I am the director general of the inspectorate part of the Health Products and Food Branch of Health Canada. I would like to start by providing a brief overview of the role and mandate of the inspectorate. The inspectorate's role is to