Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Walter Robinson, and I'm the vice-president of government affairs for Rx and D. I'm joined by Mark Fleming, the director of federal affairs and health policy at Janssen, the pharmaceutical companies of Johnson and Johnson, who also serves as vice-chair of our national affairs committee.
Rx&D represent 55 international and Canadian research-based pharmaceutical companies who discover, develop and deliver new medicine and vaccines to Canadians.
The appropriate prescribing and use of innovative medicines and vaccines can be a key enabler of health system sustainability, as they can reduce the number of unnecessary visits to the doctor, avoid lengthy stays in hospital and, in some cases, eliminate the need for invasive and costly surgical procedures.
Our members also partner with governments on the front lines of public health and seasonal influenza and other vaccination campaigns. Through this work our industry supports close to 46,000 direct and indirect high value, high skill, and high wage jobs across the country. Our members contributed over $3 billion to the Canadian economy last year, with more than $1 billion into R and D investments and approximately $322 million devoted to patient assistance and community contributions. Indeed, over 75% of this amount was devoted to more than 3,000 industry-funded clinical trials, which provide hope to patients who have not responded well to other therapies and further the frontiers of medical knowledge.