Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for your presentation. As others have said, there has been a lot learned again today. It's amazing how complex this topic gets the longer we look at it.
It is regrettable in terms of data and statistics that we lost our Stats Canada comprehensive survey form and don't have reliable data now on some of the key economic situations that our Canadian families are in. That's a regret, but I'm happy to see the long-form census being reinstated.
My first question goes to Mr. Blomqvist.
We've heard from different groups here about big bang versus incremental, and obviously your recommendation is for an incremental approach, with some kind of a default plan for low-income families based on percentage of household income and drug costs exceeding that.
The presentation here from CUPE, to quote a little bit of it, said, “Our current patchwork system also allows drug companies and pharmacies to play individual actors against one another.”
If we do the incremental approach, we simply lock in the current inefficiencies that are there in Canada, along with their cost.
I was curious as to whether you looked at all at what was happening in Europe. There are managed competition models, such as in Sweden. There the people have to have private insurance, but it's a heavily regulated private market. Do you have any thoughts about an incremental model based more on better control of the private market?