Improving Canada's drug approval process will be delicate balance

Despite small market, there are ways to help patients get timely access, experts say

- KRISTIN RUSHOWY

Canada is a much smaller market than the U.S. or U.K.

and that affects how fast drugs are submitted for approval, but there are ways for the federal and provincial governments to help move the process along so patients get faster access to them, say experts.

Talk of the delay getting drugs to patients is top of mind for Premier Doug Ford, who arrived in Nova Scotia on Monday as the annual meeting of Canada's 13 provincial and territorial leaders began.

Ford, who takes the helm of the Council of the Federation Aug. 1, has said he will raise the issue and make it a focus for the coming year.

"Canada currently ranks last in the G7 in the time it takes to approve and provide patients access to innovative and often life-saving medicines," Ford said in a recent letter to the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance, which was founded by the country's premiers.

"This needs to change," Ford wrote. "We owe it to Canadians to do everything we can to give them the same timely access to lifechanging treatments as patients in the rest of the world."