Health committee  I'd like to respond to that briefly. Our members have been very actively involved in discussions with Health Canada around the progressive licensing framework and the life-cycle approach. Regarding your specific question around marketing approvals with conditions, we are examini

Health committee  Absolutely, and I believe a physician or a public health professional makes a decision about when an adverse event needs to be reported, and then those—

Health committee  Thank you for your question.

Health committee  On your last point, the Public Health Agency of Canada is responsible for the administration of vaccines through the public health offices in the various provinces. So reporting on adverse events from vaccines often comes through the public health system, but then the ultimate re

Health committee  Good morning, Madam Chairman. Good morning, members of the committee. I am pleased to be here today and pleased you invited BIOTECanada to be part of this very important hearing on post-market safety for biologic products and vaccines. The over 215 members of BIOTECanada are com

Agriculture committee  I'll let you finish, and then I have a comment to make.

Agriculture committee  I was just going to mention that a small biotechnology company in London, Ontario, called NeoVentures BioTechnology Inc. is using advanced genetic fingerprinting techniques to help solve this problem as well. I think that's probably the advanced technology Mr. Reid was talking ab

Agriculture committee  To just briefly address your question about non-BRM programs, it's not a program so much as ensuring that this committee looks at the regulatory capacity we have to adopt these new technologies we're talking about. We're talking about new types of crops, perennial crops, grasses-

Agriculture committee  From the early drafts of the innovation and science chapter, there was a focus on taking new technologies from Ag Canada laboratories and our universities to early stage emerging companies and down to the farmer level. That was a key focus in that early chapter. Another key foc

Agriculture committee  From our standpoint, I might just toss out that spending on innovation and science would not be counted against that aggregate support. That would be a green-box kind of payment, so the more Canada can do to stimulate the development of technology that can then be exported worldw

Agriculture committee  That would be the goal of any good business plan, I suspect.

Agriculture committee  Certainly, and David probably has some comments on this as well. We're talking about increasing the volume of yield from our crops, but we're also talking about using more of the total crop we have available. For instance, right now in ethanol production we're only using the st

Agriculture committee  I can't speak for the company's business plan goals, but I'm told several hundred acres of this safflower crop could supply a majority of the insulin needs, especially for insulin in the developing world, where it's probably going to be used as an inhaled insulin or in a patch fo

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chairman and Mr. Bellavance, I might add that a lot of what biotechnology companies are investing in, in terms of technology, is also risk management for agricultural producers. Dr. Dennis' company is working on managing the risk of drought, so that even in a dry year, farmer

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's also my pleasure to be here today to address the standing committee on the Growing Forward plan for agriculture in Canada, and specifically to address the chapter on innovation and science. I'm joined today by Dr. David Dennis, who is th