Health Canada's Generic Drug Backlog Doubles, Which Officials Note Is Technically A Growth Sector
Health Canada's backlog of generic drug applications has doubled over the past year, a figure the department has not disputed so much as contextualised.
The generics in question are the cheap ones. The ones already approved somewhere else, already manufactured, already sitting in a warehouse in Brampton waiting for a reviewer to confirm that a molecule invented in 1974 remains the molecule it was in 1974. Each file waits its turn in a queue that now runs longer than the patent it was designed to outlive.
The policy logic is impressive in its symmetry. Canada spends years complaining about drug prices, then builds a regulatory apparatus whose main output is delaying the arrival of the cheaper version. Somewhere a pharmaceutical executive is thanking Ottawa in a shareholder letter he will never publish.
Department sources point to staffing, to volume, to the pandemic-era hiring that ended before the pandemic-era workload did. All of it is true. None of it explains why the fix is always another review of the review process, delivered by a working group whose report will itself enter a backlog.
Meanwhile the pharmacist in Moose Jaw tells you the generic is coming, probably in the fall, and you both understand which fall is meant.
The most Canadian detail: the backlog doubled quietly. No emergency, no minister on television, no hearings. Just a number in a table growing at a polite and steady pace, waiting for someone to notice.
And when they do notice, the recommended remedy will be a generic version of a solution the Australians approved in 2019.