Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses.
Dr. Lexchin, I'd like to start with you, please. In an article that you authored in Maclean's in March 2018, you wrote the following:
While there are drugs that are not sold in Canada, the reason is the relatively small Canadian market, not the price.
In fact, when it comes to paying for prescription drugs, only the United States and Switzerland outspend Canada on a per capita basis out of 31 industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Do jurisdictions that currently pay lower drug prices than Canada, such as France or the U.K., face slower or more limited access to new life-saving medicines and vaccines than Canada?