Agriculture committee  Absolutely, because it's for a global population, and Canada is known around the world as having a solid regulatory system in place. It's one of the best in the world, and keeping that system ahead of the other countries is very important. It's a global marketplace, it's globally competitive, and we have to understand that we can create a little bubble for Canada and hope this stuff doesn't happen, but that's not the reality.

Agriculture committee  No. The marketplace will dictate whether there is an economic value. Why would you produce something that is not going to be sold? I think it's counterintuitive that you would spend millions of dollars in research and development to put something out there and hope the world wants it.

Agriculture committee  The question's been asked about three times now. If what you're advocating is a government spend for a massive campaign to support the industry, I fully support it, because I think there's a lot to boast about. We have a phenomenal amount of innovation coming out of this country.

Agriculture committee  It's similar to Mr. Anderson's question, and it's a good one: can the government play a bigger role? I think, as in to my previous answer, that we need to ensure that the regulatory system is as competitive as possible. These advancements, these innovations, are taking place at such a rapid rate and they're in such unique spaces that you have to keep up with that pace, and it's very difficult at times.

Agriculture committee  That raises a question that was raised earlier about polls. It's a dangerous place to go when you start to do regulatory policy based on polling. I think polling can help to shape and to understand where people's concerns are, but at the end of the day, what you need to address that concern is to get more information into the hands of the consumers, and that's what the companies are going to do.

Agriculture committee  Certainly it's bad business to produce unsafe products. You're not going to be around very long if that's what you're doing. That's paramount. You heard about the 20-year experience with the AquaBounty fish, and all the other companies are the same. They take a long time to bring that innovation to the marketplace.

Agriculture committee  It's a great question. The industry across the country is found in clusters in every single province in every single region. P.E.I. is an anomaly. On a per capita basis, they're more productive from an innovation standpoint in supporting the industry than the U.S. is. They have a remarkable cluster.

Agriculture committee  The role of the government, in the industry's view, would be regulatory. Make sure that the regulatory science is as rigorous as possible. The other parts of it will be dealt with by the marketplace. Investors are the primary decision-makers as to whether or not a product will be commercialized.

Agriculture committee  Mandatory labelling is obviously a very topical discussion. There are a couple of pieces to this issue. One is that labelling can be done at any point in time. In fact, I looked at a bag of pretzels on my countertop the other day and it says, “Contains no genetically modified organisms”.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you as well to the committee for giving us the opportunity to share our view on this important matter. Thank you very much for this important opportunity. I am with BIOTECanada. As a way of introduction, BIOTECanada is the national trade association representing Canada's biotech industry.

Health committee  Absolutely, but if you cut out 50% more than Canada does, you save. You just have to figure what that is. In your overarching comment, though, you did touch on the fact that it's an outcome. We need to look for better outcomes. There are a number of different ways to get there. We have to bring them all together so that the outcomes for the patients are better.

Health committee  I don't have any data. I would be hard pressed to come up with an answer to the question of whether everybody has access. I think that, for the most part, most do right now, but that is where the struggle is starting to happen. We start to see what is coming, and the payers recognize that they are barely managing the basket they have.

Health committee  I think it's a challenge. I'm an employer as well, obviously. We have people on staff and we go through a regular review with our insurance provider, and we see this challenge daily, even though we're only nine people, so I can only imagine what it's like for larger employers.

Health committee  May I comment on that one? That's a great one. I would sound a note of caution when we're thinking about all of this and looking at other jurisdictions, because you're entirely correct, but one of the ways they've done that is limited access. Their formularies include fewer of the therapies.

Health committee  You raised for our industry the most important question. Before we talk about what pharmacare is, we are designing something for a problem when we don't really know exactly what the problem is. Is it a coverage issue? Is it an access issue? Is it a combination of both? If somebody presents with the symptoms of a heart attack, you don't immediately cut them open and take a look at the heart.