Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I really do appreciate the opportunity to appear before you and provide you with my perspectives and the perspectives of British Columbia on the common drug review and CADTH.
By way of background, I'm a pharmacist by training and have practised in hospital and government settings for the last 27 years. I'm currently, as you mentioned, the assistant deputy minister for pharmaceutical services within the Ministry of Health in British Columbia.
As part of that role, I am also serving as the co-chair of the task force for the national pharmaceutical strategy. British Columbia is co-leading that initiative, as requested by the first ministers, to advance issues of common concern in pharmaceuticals across this country. CADTH, the CDR process, plays a very important role in this.
I will not be reading my written submission; I trust you received it in both English and French. Rather than do that, I thought I would highlight some of my perspectives and allow the committee the opportunity to ask any questions they would like, for clarification or additional information from my perspective.
I bring the perspective of an individual who is responsible for the publicly funded drug program in British Columbia as well as for the drugs used in hospitals and otherwise publicly paid for. In British Columbia, that amounts to over $1 billion per year.
We view this as a very important investment in the health of British Columbians. Drug therapy is the cornerstone of modern therapy, and we feel we must invest wisely in drug therapy. We view the CDR, the common drug review, as a bit of insurance to make sure we invest wisely in therapies to advance the health of British Columbians. The CDR is truly federal-provincial-territorial initiative that works; it works well for all of the partners involved. We feel we get much value out of the investment we provide as a province.
As Doctor Sanders alluded to earlier, prior to the CDR process each jurisdiction undertook its own method of reviewing new drugs for consideration within its drug plans. To varying degrees there was more or less rigour applied to those processes. Different decisions were often arrived at between the jurisdictions because of different approaches to the drug review process. There were inconsistencies.
At the time, the jurisdictions felt this was not in the best interest of Canadians. We felt that by pooling our resources and working together we would be able to improve the rigour applied to the drug review process to provide some consistency of information that then could be viewed and interpreted by clinical experts, with advice being provided to jurisdictions to make their final decisions. Really, that was the reason we came together for the common drug review.
The other circumstance we were experiencing in those days was that in cases where different jurisdictions were coming to different decisions on drugs, the manufacturers whose products were being reviewed would take decisions in those provinces that had positive listing decisions and leverage them against the provinces that came to a different conclusion. There are significant discrepancies in the decisions across the country that resulted from the individual reviews.
With the common drug review, the intent was to try to create at least a common informational base for consideration across the country. We recognize that while the drugs are used in various jurisdictions, the information about those drugs is truly international literature.
So the literature is the same and can be viewed the same across all jurisdictions; the drugs are the same; the basic human conditions are the same. That all led us to believe that the common drug review would be the best way to move forward, and we believe it has attained those objectives.
British Columbia, as well as the other provinces I've spoken to, are extremely pleased with the current common drug review and we provide ongoing support for it, both in terms of input and feedback on an ongoing basis as well as through the governance that Deputy Minister Wright has advised you of.
Through the national pharmaceutical strategy, we've recognized that the common drug review is a key element of our pharmaceutical system in Canada. In our progress with the national pharmaceutical strategy, we have recommended the common drug review be strengthened and expanded beyond its original scope. Initially, the scope of the common drug review was for new drugs being brought into Canada for their initial purpose, or as we name it, their initial indication. Recently, deputy ministers have endorsed the expansion of the common drug review to include new indications for drugs already listed on the various formularies. That expansion is expected to happen this year.
With that, I'll conclude my remarks by saying that the common drug review is a process that was truly federal-provincial-territorial in nature, a true collaboration that has worked well for all partners across the country, and we wholeheartedly support its ongoing mandate.
Thank you.