Consultation Summary

As part of our strategic planning process, we hosted a series of town halls and distributed a public survey to gather input from our key partners, including patients, clinicians and clinical groups, industry, academic and research, and the broader community. The intention of these sessions was to gather broad input about Canada’s Drug Agency today, as well as perspectives on our future direction.

Across the engagement sessions, the following key themes emerged:

1. The organization has — and is currently — experiencing significant evolution and change. Partners acknowledged that the organization has been on an ambitious path of transformation since the last strategic plan, and the organization’s new mandate positions us for additional growth in the next several years.
2. There is excitement and interest for our work — and a desire to get involved. Partners shared a desire to foster purposeful partnerships with us, and to have more opportunities for long-term collaboration on areas of shared priority.
3. The organization plays an important system coordination and convenorship role for the health system, which builds on our unique strengths in partnership. Partners encouraged us to continue to leverage this role to provide access to high-quality, unbiased information while involving partner groups from the outset of the decision-making processes.
4. As we continue to expand in our health system leadership role, increasing our commitment to our guiding principle of transparency will be critical. Partners encouraged us to continue to lead with transparency, provide accessible avenues for partners to contribute input into the organization’s work, and engage in inclusive review processes.
5. The health system is rapidly evolving — and we will need to be agile to address the demands of the future. Significant disruptors have the potential to change the course of health care in the next 5 years — from artificial intelligence and data sharing to the potential evolvement within government dynamics — and we will need to protect space to respond to future demands.

Thank you to all of our partners who participated in the town halls and public survey — your feedback is invaluable as we begin to develop the contents for our new strategic plan. We look forward to keeping you informed on our strategic plan development progress and will be in touch with another update later this year.