Yes, some analysis has been done. There's a large number of people, not the least of whom are in the generics industry, who are attempting to estimate what incremental costs will be. The maximum amount of extended protection that brand drugs could get in the Canadian marketplace would be two years. In reality, given the intersection of data protection, patent remaining, patent life, and so on, it's likely to be considerably less, on average, for most products. But every day that a patent product remains in the marketplace beyond what is currently the case is a day when the generic equivalent is not in the marketplace. One can calculate the incremental cost.
This is why measures such as the work being done through the pCPA , and some changes that may be in the offing for PMPRB, are so important.
It is difficult to estimate the global cost. We can do modelling based on drugs that are in the marketplace today and try to imagine what would happen with the same mix of data protection and patent life remaining, but we're actually talking about drugs that will be in the marketplace five, six, seven, eight, ten years and beyond. The profiled drugs and their costs and whether or not there even are generics that could replace them will depend on what's going on in that drug marketplace.