Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. The other presenters have stated a bit of their mini-CVs, saying how low they've been with their various organizations. I should probably tell you that I've been with the PMPRB for four years as chair. I was appointed chair in the fall of 2005. We are pleased to appear before this committee.

Health committee  We want to resolve one of the problems that is often raised by pharmaceutical companies, particularly during hearings, when we are addressing a contravention. When companies improve their drugs so that they have a better effect, companies should be able to get a better price. Yet, the current guidelines do not allow us to accede to their request.

Health committee  The case is currently before the Federal Court of Appeal. In fact, a hearing on this matter is scheduled for June. We regulate net prices. The discounts given to provinces reduce the average price of transactions. We believe that it is within our mandate to go over these discounts.

Health committee  In a perfect world, by changing our guidelines, and by updating them, we will no longer have to hold any hearings, or deal with any cases of non-compliance. That's our objective; but it may be rather utopian.

Health committee  I am setting out this utopian goal with a smile on my face. There will always be non-compliance, but we hope that there will be far less. The guidelines have not changed since 1994.

Health committee  Pardon me?

Health committee  Thank you, Madam. The issue of generics is one that has come before us relatively recently, and as I said earlier, we are governed by the Patent Act. You might think that generic products don't have patents. That would be the popular perception out there, that they don't have patents, when in fact a large number of them do have patents.

Health committee  How much our increase in funding would affect...?

Health committee  I can't tell you what the average cost of an investigation is, but we got cut off before when you asked me what the price of a hearing was. The price of a hearing is about $500,000 or $600,000. Some are relatively short, some are relatively long, some are very complicated, and various expert witnesses have to be brought from all over.

Health committee  I can't answer that offhand. Are you asking me basically how many of those 74 would ultimately go to a hearing and incur all those extra costs?

Health committee  Let me just say it's a hard question to answer. We're not wasting the money. Hearings are extremely expensive and we try to avoid them as much as possible. This is one of the reasons why we think our guidelines need to be modernized, because we might avoid a lot of the seemingly repetitive issues that come up in our hearings.

Health committee  I don't know the answer, but maybe three, two, one.

Health committee  Ms. Ouellet is just telling me that four years ago there were 45 investigations; now there are 90 investigations. So that means there are more drugs that seem to be offside in terms of the price. The rules haven't changed. We're hoping to modernize our guidelines, as we've mentioned before, in order to allow for a premium for these incremental innovations.

Health committee  The act hasn't changed and our regulations haven't changed.

Health committee  The compliance rate has gone down slightly, and that's why we're having more investigations.