Thank you very much, Chair.
Again, I'm not sure that I follow Mr. Naqvi's logic here in saying that this is undermining any future ability to do anything. This is a service that is already provided by the Canadian agency for drugs and therapies in health, CADTH, and certainly one would believe that if they want to rewrite the potential future intervention of the Canadian drug agency, then I would suggest that this paragraph is not where that should happen. I can't quote you chapter and verse, but I do believe there is a segment that talks about the Canadian drug agency, and if Mr. Naqvi wishes to define what that might look like, then certainly that is something we're happy to entertain.
Again, on behalf of Canadians, our expectation is that there's an honesty here with respect to the national bulk purchasing that already exists on their behalf, because if we don't define it as such, what this bill, in its aspiration, would suggest to Canadians is that they are somehow going to get a better price for their medication through this bill. We know that when the public plans negotiate these prices, adding another million people to that negotiation is not going to enable a better pricing effect, and we heard that.
If we want to talk about the facts, which Mr. Julian is often mentioning, the facts are that we heard testimony with respect to the national bulk purchasing strategy that exists. For clarity, we'll call that the “pCPA”, the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance. What we heard from the manufacturers who were represented here was that an incredibly rigorous negotiation already exists, in a market with small margins.
Mr. Julian was also obviously at that time wanting to say that these were lobbyists, when we know that everybody who appeared here as witnesses are lobbyists. That's what they are. They are all lobbyists. To attempt to be disparaging of folks who have and run businesses and employ thousands of people across the country, to say that they are lobbyists.... Well, as I said, everybody, sadly, who appeared in the truncated form—