Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House to speak to Bill C‑64.
It is a great pleasure to join the debate today about the pharmacare legislation that is going to bring in the first steps of pharmacare in Canada, as well as to be the last person to give a speech before we actually vote on this important piece of legislation.
Quality health care, including access to prescription drugs, is vital to protecting and promoting the health and well-being of Canadians. Prescription medicines allow millions of Canadians to prevent and fight disease, manage chronic illness, ease pain and breathe better; in other words, they allow Canadians to live healthier and more productive lives. I must say, there are few issues that I hear more about than health care as a priority for my constituents.
With rising costs, some Canadians are facing difficult choices between paying for their prescriptions and covering essentials, such as food and heat. Nobody should be put in that circumstance. We need to ensure that prescription drugs are more accessible and affordable for Canadians, including those facing the greatest financial barriers to accessing medications. That is why our government has introduced the pharmacare act. The bill proposes foundational principles for national universal pharmacare and describes the government's intent to work with provinces and territories to provide Canadians with universal, single-payer, first-dollar coverage for a range of contraceptive and diabetes products.
When medicare was introduced in Canada in the 1960s, prescription drugs played a relatively limited role in health care. Most drugs outside of a hospital were inexpensive medicines for common conditions. However, in the intervening decades, the development of drugs has surged as pharmaceutical companies have pushed the science further in search of new treatments and cures. Prescription medicines are now an essential part of health care. As a share of overall health care costs, spending on prescribed drugs has risen from six per cent in 1975 to nearly 14% in 2022. This makes prescription drugs the second-largest area of health care spending in Canada, after hospital services.
Today, the landscape of prescription drugs available in Canada is robust and complex, with pharmaceutical companies launching dozens of new products every year. To support effective management, in government-run, public drug plans in Canada, as well as some privately run plans, a formulary is developed, which is a list of drugs and related products that are eligible for coverage under the drug plan. To develop the formularies, public plans consider both how well a drug works and whether these products offer good value for money relative to other treatment options. While there are over a hundred public plans in Canada, there is generally good alignment with regard to the list of drugs that are eligible for coverage across provinces and territories.
Many Canadians are only eligible for public drug coverage with high deductibles or premiums that provide little relief for more routine drug expenses, such as for prescribed contraception and diabetes medications. A national formulary would outline the scope of prescription drugs and related products that all Canadians should have affordable access to under national universal pharmacare.
In 2019, the advisory council on the implementation of national pharmacare, chaired by Dr. Eric Hoskins, recommended a national formulary service, one of the standards for national universal pharmacare. He proposed pharmacare coverage to be phased in, starting with a short list of essential medicines. In budget 2019, the government announced funding for a number of foundational steps towards national pharmacare, including the development of a national formulary. Back in 2022, the government announced continued progress towards this by introducing a pharmacare act and tasking the drug agency to develop a national formulary of essential medicines and a bulk purchasing plan. Preliminary work has already been completed, and a framework and process for developing a future national formulary was recommended.
The panel released its final report in 2022, including giving guiding principles for the formulary and a process for bringing it into place, as well as a sample list of commonly prescribed drugs and related products for three therapeutic areas with a high volume of drug use in Canada. These are cardiovascular disease, diabetes and mental illness. This list has been expanded by looking at equity-seeking groups to make sure that we are closing the gaps in access between different communities in Canada.
Actually, this foundational work is already having real-world impacts. In 2021, our government announced that it would work with the Province of Prince Edward Island on the improving affordable access to prescription drugs initiative. Under this initiative, P.E.I. is receiving funding to add new drugs to its list of publicly covered drugs and to lower the out-of-pocket costs for island residents.
I just want to say that, with the legislation, P.E.I. residents have already saved $2 million in out-of-pocket costs on more than 230,000 prescriptions, and the savings continue. Our government remains firmly committed to taking the next steps in pharmacare, and the legislation today is going to help us do that by providing coverage for contraception and diabetes medicine. This is part of our overall approach to support the provinces to improve health care in Canada, including with a new deal we signed with all the provinces last year to provide better care, as well as making it easier to get access to such things as a medical practitioner in rural areas, including where I live, by providing student loan forgiveness for people to operate there.
