Mr. Speaker, today I am honoured to be speaking to Bill C-17, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act.

Before I begin, I would like to thank the hon. member for Oakville for the courage and determination he has shown in having this bill introduced in the House and in supporting it, as it touches him personally.

It is very important that we debate such a sensitive and important bill. The federal government must shoulder its responsibilities regarding the Food and Drugs Act. It is good that we are debating this today. I would like to assure the hon. member opposite, the member for Oakville, that the official opposition will be supporting the bill.

I understand that the minister would be open to amendments. We would be more than pleased to participate in the debate and put forward amendments to Bill C-17 so that it can be improved and so that we create the best legislation possible. In that way, we can keep cases like Vanessa's and so many others from happening in Canada.

The NDP will be supporting Bill C-17, which makes several key improvements to drug safety laws.

First, it allows the government to recall drugs or order the distributor to take corrective action to remedy the problem with the drug. That is an extremely important element, one that I will come back to later on in my speech.

Second, it allows the health minister to order a manufacturer or importer to modify the label of a drug to update the side effects or health risks associated with it. The minister can also order a review of the drug and require that a copy of the review be given to the department. In addition, the minister can require manufacturers to update Canadian information about the risks associated with their drug even if the safety risks were discovered in other countries

This bill is a good first step in establishing a comprehensive drug plan and in setting the course for our society on this issue. After calls from many health care professionals and advocates, this bill will finally grant the health minister the necessary power to pull unsafe drugs from the market and ensure better labelling of possible adverse effects of drugs.

We support this legislative measure and we hope that even more practical measures will follow. We support this bill, but there is still much to be done to improve drug safety measures. We will therefore propose amendments to improve this bill in committee.

We hope that our efforts will lead to a comprehensive piece of legislation that will include follow-up by Health Canada on adverse drug reactions, increased transparency with regard to the assessment of prescription drugs and a better system for communicating the risks associated with drugs to health care professionals and patients, in particular.

As I mentioned, this bill will make it possible for the government to compel manufacturers to recall drugs and order distributors to take corrective action to resolve problems with their products. In this regard, at the end of her speech, my colleague from Halifax gave the example of a mistake that was made in 2011 by the manufacturer of Alesse 28.

Alesse 28 is a type of birth control pill that generally works on a 28-day cycle. Women take the product for the first 21 days and then they take a placebo for the remaining seven days. The placebos are often just sugar pills. The problem that occurred had to do with the content of the pills. Rather than containing 21 birth control pills, a package of the product contained two weeks' worth of placebo pills.

Obviously, this can have a rather serious impact on a woman's menstrual cycle. I do not necessarily want to get into the details of how the menstrual cycle works, but having good birth control that works is really very important.

Since 1969, the year in which woman were given access to oral contraceptives, thousands of women in Canada and throughout the world have been using this method of birth control. I have used it myself, as many other female members of the House likely have, and many Canadian women use it.

It is an extremely important part of our family planning, for all sorts of reasons. There are various reasons why women use birth control. A drug that does not have the anticipated effect can have an extremely harmful impact on the health of women and on family planning.

These thousands of women trust in the system, in our health care system and in the drug manufacturers. The women affected by this problem experienced low hormone levels, which caused a number of problems. The main purpose of the product is to prevent ovulation. The placebos prevent that prevention, so to speak, and allow the woman to ovulate. That can have a serious impact on family planning.

Bill C-17 could do something about this. How did people find out about this mistake? Pharmaceutical companies were certainly not forthcoming about it. Pharmacists were the ones who sounded the alarm after noticing that there was a problem with the drugs they were selling. If the pharmacists had not spoken up and told people about the situation, the pharmaceutical companies surely would not have told anyone. There is no telling how far the situation might have gone.

It is good to know that with Bill C-17, new provisions will enable the federal government to do something. Currently, it cannot do anything about situations like that. The government has no power to act. It is very important to create legislation to address these situations. I am speaking on behalf of many women who believe that the federal government should have a say in the matter. We have to make sure that women have access to the best possible drugs, the best possible oral contraceptives.

Once again, I would like to thank the member for Oakville for introducing this measure in his bill.

As I said, we will support this bill at second reading, and we will probably put forward a number of amendments in committee just to make it better. That said, we do think that it is a step in the right direction.

We would like to see several more things in this bill. I know that I will not be able to go into detail because my time is almost up, but the bill ought to include a number of measures, such as optimal prescribing practices to ensure that Canadians are being prescribed the most appropriate drugs. Public disclosure of clinical trial results is also important because, in Canada, the results of numerous clinical trials are never published or made available to the public. We are also asking the government to strengthen the common drug review.

In closing, I would like to say that Bill C-17 is a step in the right direction and that the federal government has to step up to its responsibility with respect to the Food and Drugs Act. I am also pleased that the government is so open to amendments that might be put forward. I am very happy that we are talking about this bill in the House. I can assure the member for Oakville that we will vote in favour of the bill and that we will make sure it is the best it can be.

Rosane Doré Lefebvre

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