I'll jump in, because I actually did a fair bit of research for Senator Kirby, which was used, and I have actually in my paying life, my salaried job, done a lot of work on pharmacare coverage.
Generally the pharmacare problem is a maritime problem. You're talking about people who do not have coverage whatsoever, basically people who are of working age in the Maritimes. Actually, some provinces are now moving into that area, thankfully. I believe Nova Scotia and Newfoundland are. Many of the provinces have it. Certainly the prairie provinces have reasonable coverage, but the deductibles are extraordinarily high. You have $800,000 deductibles for a public plan targeted at the need, whereas I think your deductible is $60, if that.
So we have a program that is far less generous for the poor, which is standard. This is what we do with maternity benefits, child care, everything. The programs for the poor are less generous.
The federal government has an initiative around catastrophic drug coverage, but that's strictly for catastrophic. That's for your $4,000 to $5,000 drug care, and we're talking about life and death here, you know that.
So we move that ahead. What I would do is this, and I have no idea if it's in your jurisdiction. There are formularies attached to all these drug plans, and I would say that in each province the formulary for the publicly administered drug plan should be the same as the formulary of the person who administers the program--his employer health benefit. I've always liked to latch on to self-interest, which is why Canadians understand why we don't want two-tier medicine. The reason we want one-tier medicare is so we're all sharing the same program. And we don't do that on dental.
I have one last quick comment. This poem about kids is about hot dog days, it's about field trips. How early does a child who is low income in Canada learn that they're low income? I suspect they learn very quickly. If they haven't learned by the time they're in kindergarten or grade one, they learn there, when they discover that they're not going on the field trip or they can't take art.
Did I use his time? I'm sorry.