Thank you, Chair.
Thank you so much, Minister, for coming. We appreciate your doing this today.
As you know, I'm a recovering emergency physician. I spent 20 years working in emergency departments. Any problem with public health often came down on our departments first, and we would see trends. Among the trends we would see was the detrimental health effects when people couldn't afford their medications and became ill simply because of that.
As you know, we're studying the structure and implementation of a national pharmacare program. One of the things we've found is that Canadians pay the second-highest drug costs in the world. Although the report is not out, we have a parliamentary budget office report that says that if we had a national pharmacare program, the nation would save roughly $4 billion a year.
Could you share with us what steps you, and Dr. Philpott before you, have taken to reduce the costs of medications to Canadians?