Bill C-17: Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act (Vanessa's Law) -- Senate Committee
October 2014
Perry Eisenschmid, the Canadian Pharmacists Association's Chief Executive Officer, and Janet Cooper, Vice President, Professional and Membership Affairs, presented to the Senate Social Affairs, Science, and Technology Committee on proposed amendments to the Food and Drug Act known as Bill C-17.
CPhA is supportive of the Bill, in particular the increased penalties for unsafe products, new powers for Health Canada to recall unsafe products and the requirement for drug companies to revise labels to clearly reflect health risk information. We did raise some concerns, in particular the exclusion of Natural Health Products, lack of clarity regarding reporting of adverse drug events and the increased burden that might result if reporting requirements included drugs for which adverse events were well known. Many of these concerns would be addressed in the Regulations that will be developed to support the Act, and the government will also be reviewing the NHP regulations in the near future.
Our address to the committee was followed by a 45 minute Q&A session and CPhA was commended for our role in providing practitioners with evidence-based drug and therapeutic information, including new safety information.