Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you all for coming.
Ms. Kyle, that was very refreshing, what you said about recognizing coming from privilege and not having to struggle in the way many people do. I'm in a very similar boat. I was raised by a lawyer. I'm a physician married to another physician. I will never have trouble making ends meet if I have a catastrophic diagnosis of any sort. Whatever else I have to worry about, how I pay for it is never going to be an issue.
However, for 20 years I was an emergency doctor, and for the last eight years it was in an inner-city hospital. If you spend time in a hospital like that, you understand.... I understand how truly privileged I am when some of my patients literally didn't have homes, never mind that they couldn't afford medications.
One of the things I've been passionate about is national pharmacare. Again, I know we're talking about diabetes, but this folds into it because it's such a major disease.
One of the things concerning me of late is the amount of very organized push-back we're getting from certain interests in the community. At another meeting, a representative of Johnson & Johnson claimed that our strategy to decrease drug prices is going to make Canada a non-competitive environment for the development of new medications.
There's some information out there claiming that if we decrease the price of our medications, it's going to inhibit development of new drugs, and this will put the lives of Canadians at risk. Could you respond to that statement? I'll ask all three of you in turn.
Ms. Kyle, go ahead.