Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To you, my colleagues, the witnesses, the analysts, the clerk and all staff, merry Christmas. Hopefully you have a great holiday. Thank you for all the work you do, by the way.
I'm going to start with Ms. Fuller.
Ms. Fuller, I've often heard the claim that lower drug prices will lead to a loss in R and D and manufacturing in Canada. In fact, the countries that receive some of the highest rates of industry investment also have relatively low drug prices. For example, Belgium receives 13 times the investment levels of Canada, despite average prices being 20% or a little lower. In comparison, pharmaceutical investment levels in Canada have been falling for the past 15 years or so, with Canada now having some of the lowest R and D investment and manufacturing activities in the developed world.
Could you comment on that and could you comment on whether there's any evidence to suggest a correlation between affordable drug prices and reduced R and D investments?