The Regulatory Roadmap for Health Products and Food

What is the Regulatory Roadmap?

Health Canada has launched its Regulatory Roadmap for Health Products and Food, a multi-year plan to deliver simpler, more efficient, and more transparent food and health product regulations and better health and safety outcomes to Canadians.

With hundreds of new health and food products developed worldwide each year, and with scientific and medical advances likely to accelerate the pace of innovation, the department is looking to modernize the rules and practices that determine how those products make it on Canadian store shelves and into Canadian homes.

The goal of the Roadmap is to move to a streamlined, more efficient and transparent system that reduces regulatory burden, enhances consumer safety, fosters innovation and accountability, and helps deliver quickly the widest variety of health options and benefits to Canadian families.

Why now?

Health Canada currently administers a complex web of regulations under the Food and Drugs Act, some of which have been on the books for more than 50 years and are no longer up to the task they were designed to do. It is time to modernize.

How will Health Canada achieve this?

Health Canada's Regulatory Roadmap is built on careful study, extensive consultations and a commitment to a step-by-step approach.

Health Canada plans to move first on those issues where a broad consensus on the problems and solutions already exists and where benefits to Canadians are the most significant.

The plan is to see the Roadmap unfold gradually over the coming years, in an inclusive and transparent process leading to its ultimate destination: a modern, efficient system that enhances the health and safety of Canadians.

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