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# What Has Changed Six Months After the Government Responded to Petition e-6492?
- URL: https://heathercutler.ca/government-response-petition-e-6492/
- Published: 2026-10-22T18:46:36.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-22T19:24:55.000Z
- Description: Petition e-6492 asked Ottawa for faster trials, national guidelines, and real access to testing and treatment. The government's response arrived on April 13, 2026. Six months later, we checked what it actually delivered — and what it never mentioned.
- Author: The Heather Cutler Foundation
- Tags: News, Advocacy, Policy, Petition, Tom Osborne

On February 23, 2026, MP Tom Osborne presented petition e-6492 in the House of Commons. Behind it were 549 certified signatures, plus close to 1,500 more Canadians who signed the parallel campaign. They were patients, caregivers, and families asking the federal government to make pancreatic cancer a national priority.

The government tabled its [official response](https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-6492) on April 13, 2026\. We never published our read of it. So here it is: what the government answered, what it did not answer, and what has changed in the six months since.

## What we asked for

The petition called for five things: better access to clinical trials; national guidelines that include precision medicine, somatic (biomarker) testing, and clinical trials; more research funding; removing the geographic and financial barriers patients face; and investment in modernizing clinical trials, including the Canadian Remote Access Framework for Clinical Trials (CRAFT).

## What the government said

On clinical trials, the response points to Health Canada's Clinical Trials Modernization Initiative. The goal is a more flexible, risk-based set of rules. It would let parts of a trial happen closer to home, so patients in rural, remote, and underserved regions could take part without always travelling to a major centre. On December 20, 2025, Health Canada opened a [90-day public consultation](https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/programs/consultation-clinical-trials-regulatory-modernization-initiative/document.html) on the proposed new Clinical Trials Regulations and we submitted feedback.

On research, the response cites the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). CIHR invested $1.1 billion in cancer research between 2020-21 and 2024-25\. That includes $34 million for pancreatic cancer. The response also cites a $41 million investment in cancer prevention and early detection.

On drug pricing, the response notes that negotiations by the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance (pCPA) now take 6.5 months on average, down from 11 months in 2020\. In late 2025, the pCPA added two faster pathways. One is an Early Negotiation Process for select cancer drugs approved through [Project Orbis](https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/oncology-center-excellence/project-orbis). It aims to finish negotiations in three to four months, at the same time as the final funding recommendation. The response is also clear about the limit here: the pCPA does not make final coverage decisions. Provinces do. (Our explainer walks through the full path a drug takes, step by step: [How does a new drug get approved and funded in Canada?](https://heathercutler.ca/how-does-a-new-drug-get-approved-and-funded-in-canada/))

## What the government didn't say

Read the response closely and the gaps are specific:

- **National guidelines** — asked for directly. The response does not mention them at all. Instead, the charity sector is carrying the work: Craig's Cause Pancreatic Cancer Society is leading the development of national pancreatic cancer guidelines, and Christopher Cutler, our founder and executive director, sits on the working committee. (Our position on what those guidelines should contain: [National guidelines for pancreatic cancer care](https://heathercutler.ca/national-guidelines-for-pancreatic-cancer-care/).)
- **Biomarker testing and precision medicine** — asked for directly. These words do not appear anywhere in the response. Once again, a non-profit is filling a gap in the public system. Pancreatic Cancer North America runs My CANcer Code, which provides biomarker testing to patients at no cost through OncoHelix. It is testing that patients in much of Canada cannot get funded in the public system. New Brunswick is the one province the program does not cover, and that is not because patients there are left out — they already have access to biomarker testing through their own province. (What testing involves and how to ask for it: [Biomarker and genetic testing](https://heathercutler.ca/testing/).)
- **CRAFT** — the remote-access trials framework named in the petition. It is not mentioned.
- **Travel and financial barriers** — no commitments. Decentralized trials may help one day. But nothing in the response puts a patient in rural Newfoundland any closer to a trial today.
- **No commitments specific to pancreatic cancer.** There are no targets and no dates. The funding figures are real, but they mostly describe existing programs that cover all cancers.

## Six months on

The consultation on the new trials regulations closed in March 2026\. Since then, Health Canada has published a summary of what it heard, along with an [interim policy](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=81cba5c6-3839-451d-b81b-558f3db5de05) that moves three pieces ahead early: simpler ethics-approval notification for multi-site trials, a wider definition of who can serve as a trial investigator, and acceptance of remote and electronic consent. The final regulations are now expected in spring 2027, and they would not come into force until spring 2028\. That is about two years after a response that presented modernization as the answer on trial access.

The faster pCPA pathways exist on paper. Their first real test will be the next pancreatic cancer drug that reaches them. And the biggest new pancreatic cancer drug in years has not reached Canada at all. [Daraxonrasib](https://heathercutler.ca/is-daraxonrasib-available-in-canada/) was approved in the United States in August and recommended in Europe in October. It still has not been filed with Health Canada. So it has not even entered the pipeline that these timelines describe.

A government response is a record of what a government is willing to put in writing. This one shows movement on process: faster negotiations, modernized trial rules. And it is silent on the two things that would change care on the ground: national guidelines and funded biomarker testing.

We will keep tracking both. We update our drug approval timelines, trial listings, and provincial testing information as they change. World Pancreatic Cancer Day is November 19.

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## Who's who in this article

- **Health Canada** — the federal department that approves drugs for sale in Canada. It also authorizes and oversees clinical trials.
- **Clinical Trials Modernization Initiative** — Health Canada's project to replace the clinical trial rules in place since 2001\. The new rules would be more flexible and risk-based, and would allow decentralized trials.
- **CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research)** — Canada's federal agency for funding health research.
- **Health technology assessment (HTA)** — a formal review of how well a drug works and what it costs. Governments use it to decide whether public drug plans should pay for the drug.
- **Canada's Drug Agency (CDA-AMC)** — the national agency (formerly CADTH) that reviews drugs for every province and territory except Quebec and recommends whether public plans should fund them.
- **INESSS** — Quebec's own health technology assessment body. It does the same review work for Quebec.
- **pCPA (pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance)** — the body that negotiates drug prices for Canada's public drug plans as a group. It negotiates price. It does not decide coverage.
- **Letter of Intent (LOI)** — the document that records the price terms the pCPA and a drug maker have agreed to. After a Letter of Intent, each province and territory decides whether to sign its own listing agreement and cover the drug.
- **Project Orbis** — a program led by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Regulators in several countries, including Health Canada, review cancer drugs at the same time instead of one after another.
- **CRAFT (Canadian Remote Access Framework for Clinical Trials)** — a framework led by the Canadian Cancer Clinical Trials Network (3CTN). Its goal is to open trials to patients who live far from major cancer centres.
- **Somatic / biomarker testing** — lab testing of a tumour's DNA and proteins. It looks for mutations that can match a patient to a targeted treatment or a clinical trial.
- **E-petition** — a petition certified by the Clerk of Petitions and presented in the House of Commons. Once one is presented, the government has 45 calendar days to table a written response.