Welcome to CAREB - Bienvenue a l'ACCER

Dear CAREB members,

This past week, the CAREB Board of Directors and Public Affairs Committee expressed their concern over the development of the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) Draft National Standard for Research Ethics Boards reviewing biomedical clinical trials regulated by Health Canada. CAREB is asking that the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and Health Canada work closely to continue development of the draft standard and to ensure that it is harmonized with the upcoming revision of the TCPS.

I am attaching below a copy of the letter for CAREB members to review. CAREB believes that, building on the work done to date and with the application of focused expertise on the next steps of developing a standard, we now have a special opportunity to create a standard which harmonizes with the TCPS. This will strengthen Canada’s national ethics review system, protect our research participants, promote Canada as country of choice for biomedical research and foster rapid access of Canadians to new medical treatments.

Link to the letter

I would like to thank the members of the CAREB Board of Directors, the Public Affairs Committee, the CGSB working group and especially Richard Neuman (the CAREB representative on the CGSB Standard Committee) for the significant amount of time and effort they have all contributed to the CAREB response.

CAREB Public Affairs Committee:

Laurel Evans, University of British Columbia
Richard Neuman, Memorial University
Rachel Zand, University of Toronto
Janet Manzo, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
Susan Sykes, University of Waterloo
Gilles Morier, University of Ottawa

CGSB Working Group:

Co-Chairs:
* Janet Manzo - Executive Director, Ontario Cancer Research Ethics Board (Toronto, ON)
* Richard Neuman - Professor Pharmacology (retired) and former Co-Chair of Human Ethics Committee, Memorial University (St. John's, NL)

Members:
* Judith Abbott - Senior Administrative Coordinator, University of Alberta Biomedical REB (Edmonton, AB)
* Albert Clark - Chair, Health Sciences REB, Queen's University (Kingston, ON)
* Patrick Clifford - Manager, Professional Practice, Southlake Regional Health Centre (Newmarket, ON)
* Gordon DuVal - The Research Ethics Project, Consultant (Ottawa, ON)
* Toni Fletcher - Manager, Office of Research Ethics, University of Western Ontario (London, ON)
* Pia Ganz - Manager, Clinical Ethics, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC)
* Julie Gibson - Director, Clinical Research Services, The Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto, ON)

Sincerely,

Alex Karabanow
CAREB President