Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I certainly support this motion. I welcome a return to discussions regarding health care rather than politics. There has been a lot of talk lately about our filibustering. I just want to point out that in the last few meetings [Technical difficulty—Editor]. I'm someone who naturally likes to talk a lot and very slowly. You can ask my wife about that.
Let's get back to talking about health. I do like this subject. It's a very interesting one. Apparently, in Canada we have some of the highest prices for patented drugs among all developing countries, but the issue of patent protection for medications, especially essential medications, is a very complex issue.
I heard a number a few years ago that in order to recoup the cost of developing a drug, I was told that pharmaceutical companies have to be able to sell about a billion dollar's worth of a medication. That's not just for that one medication. For every medication they come up with that they can market, there's a whole bunch of other medications that don't get that far, so it's really important to allow pharmaceutical companies to charge an adequate amount for their products. Otherwise there's no incentive to carry on research, and we have seen that, for example, with Trikafta. It's a medication that can substantially help a lot of people.
We certainly want to ensure that the incentive for pharmaceutical companies to carry out research remains, and that means allowing them to charge adequate prices for medications. However, it's also important to allow people both in Canada and globally to access essential medications.
This battle between two opposing concerns—allowing pharmaceutical companies to make adequate money to compensate for the development of drugs versus allowing people to access affordable medications—played out a number of years ago in Africa in relation to access to antiretrovirals for the treatment of HIV/AIDS.
I don't know if you remember, but back then antiretrovirals were exceedingly expensive. Africa was being devastated by the HIV pandemic. This issue came before the World Trade Organization at that time, and the WTO reaffirmed what's called the TRIPS flexibility. TRIPS is trade-related aspects of intellectual property, whose flexibilities allow poor countries to access medications that are still under patent and to make those medications affordable when a country needs to for the sake of the public health of its citizens.
This battle has been played out. There are certainly competing interests. I think with respect to the actual changes to the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, we see a lot of these same sorts of considerations taking place. I do agree that it is something worth studying. It's a complex issue, and I welcome spending some time doing it. I think the suggestion already made as to how we do it concurrently with continuing studies of COVID is something that is certainly desirable.
Since I have the floor, Mr. Chair, I would ask whether now would be the time to propose a new motion or when I can propose a new motion.