Evidence of meeting #37 for Health in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A video is available from Parliament.
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the Department of Health already has access to the data we are trying to purchase. My understanding is that they get—
NDP
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Probably they cannot, because their contract probably does not allow them to share that data with other organizations. I don't know, but it's something we can—
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Could you check into that? You didn't say 100%, but if you're quite sure that the health department has this data, which the government has already paid for, one would think we wouldn't have to pay for it a second time. I hope not, anyway.
Can you look into that?
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
We can certainly check and make sure, but they may have the data in a way not directly useful for us. We may need a certain way of gathering that data or putting the data together that this private provider would do for us. They may have access to the raw data, but not in the way that you want it.
We can certainly check for that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
Time is up.
Before we go to Ms. Sidhu, I just want to ask whether you have had a precedent for a study that you did going over $100,000 and for which you had to seek more funding. Has this happened before?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
It has not happened for a study. For a court case in 2012-2013 it happened, but not for a study.
Mr. Chair, the member raised a very interesting point concerning access to the department's information, if the department has the information. Of course, we can ask this committee....You have the power to call for papers and people, including data, which is something we do for all the studies we do, either for individual parliamentarians or for a committee. These are our preliminary terms of reference. We debated among ourselves whether we would call them terms of reference, draft terms of reference.... We chose “preliminary”, because this is work in progress with this committee.
At one point, we will present hopefully final terms of reference that will be approved by or will at least satisfy this committee, and they will include the costs and what is and is not encompassed in them. That's the normal procedure. At that point, we can move on.
As to having access to the information, it is still to be debated whether we will be able to have access to the department's data.
Liberal
Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Can you talk a little more about the past successes, barriers, and issues with buying data sets for other studies?
Also, again, is there any role for the committee to help you engage with the provinces, or anything our committee or minister can do?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
In terms of negotiations or discussions with the provinces, it's looking good so far. I had a discussion last week with the Quebec department of health. That looks okay. We are exchanging, and they are quite open in terms of providing some information.
Regarding the other type of specific information owned by the only firm in Canada that holds this kind of data on private-public coverage, Carleigh, as I said, and Mark, who is the legal counsel in the PBO's office, are looking into all the agreements and making sure we're going to get the data that the taxpayers' money will be paying for. We're really careful about that.
That's the answer I can give you. That's the only source right now that we have to negotiate with in terms of purchasing expensive data.
Conservative
Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB
I don't have a whole lot of questions here either. I think everything was covered.
I do want to ask our committee how we went about choosing Quebec as the formulary to study. Was it just a random thing, or is Quebec one of the more generous formularies out there? Do you recall at all why we chose Quebec?
Karin Phillips Analyst, Library of Parliament
As you recall, we had a meeting, and there were several options. Quebec was one of the provinces put forth because it was on the more generous side.
There was some potential for.... It was my understanding that there had been some work done on what is referred to as an implicit formulary, as a working national formulary. If the PBO could have access to that, they could use it, but if it was not available or feasible, they could use an existing provincial formulary. When the committee made its decision, it chose Quebec because it had a more comprehensive formulary.
Conservative
Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB
I see. Thank you.
Do you have any idea of whether it would be easier to get data from another province? Is Quebec maybe more difficult to get that information from? I'm just throwing that out there. I know it's a question you probably can't answer, but I thought about it anyway, especially for $100,000. It seems a lot of money for collecting a list, a formulary, and I would think what is on that list and also the cost would be quite well known.
I have a question about the cost. Are there some confidentiality issues with respect to letting Canadians know exactly how much they're paying for these drugs? I know a lot of negotiated pricing goes on, and a lot of it is confidential.
Will there be issues with respect to confidentiality on pricing with the drug companies that they've negotiated deals with?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Thank you for the question.
Just to be clear, the Quebec government will provide, according to my latest discussion on Friday, the information we need for free. There's no cost there. It's only a matter of having the proper support. As I said, we need electronic files, which are easier to work with, and so on, for the model. The cost doesn't come from the Quebec government.
On your question about anything that has to do with federal-provincial issues these days, particularly last week because of the negotiations on the health program and so on, of course it's always a sensitive issue. For the moment, it doesn't seem to be a problem.
Let me ask Mark about confidentiality. Mark, as legal counsel, will give you all the information about that.
Mark Mahabir Director of Policy (Costing) and General Counsel, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Thank you for the question.
We will be using a composite price. The price will consider all the provinces' costs but will not identify the cost for specific provinces.
Conservative
Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB
Great.
That's about it for me. I don't know if I can share some time if a colleague....
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
I have a point of clarification. You're saying that the database we're seeking already exists, just in another department. Am I understanding that correctly?
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
I said I believe the Department of Health has access to these kinds of data for their own purposes, their own research and regulation of drugs. They always have access to all kinds of information about pharmaceuticals, so I'm assuming they have access to these data, but, as I said, we can check with them to make sure that if they have it, it's in a form that would be useful to us, a form they could share with us.
Do you want to add to that?
Director of Policy (Costing) and General Counsel, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Yes, the data Health Canada has may be old. It may not be recent data. What we're getting from the provider would be recent data.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
These questions need to be clarified for us before we can make an educated decision with regard to going ahead with this study or not. Is it possible to have you come back to the committee with an update on whether this data is accessible and what year it's from?
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
We can certainly check with the Department of Health and see what data they have and whether they can legally share it with us—they may be under contractual obligations not to share the data—as well as whether it's up to date. Certainly we can inform the committee of the results.