Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for appearing today. As both sides would acknowledge, it's important for us to hear from people, and we've been hearing from witnesses not just here in Ottawa. We were in Halifax and we intend to go to Vancouver in the new year. Thank you for being key stakeholders throughout the process. This truly was a transformative deal for Canada but also a transformative process in terms of engagement with stakeholders throughout. That's been a consistent theme we've heard, so thank you for working with Mr. Verheul and Minister Fast and the team to get us to where we are today.
I have a few questions for both sides. First, Mr. Williams, you spoke about drug costs. Certainly we heard folks from the generic industry here, and we've seen a lot of speculation and numbers that are, in many cases, based on studies that were based on pre-final outcome IP aspects of the agreement in principle, so they are not helpful to the conversation.
You took a strong position that we won't see the sky falling, as some might suggest. I wonder if you could expand on that and include the fact that some of the commentary in this area has not addressed the fact that the provinces have been bringing efficiencies to bulk purchasing of pharmaceutical products in recent years which is putting a downward pressure, to begin with, on drug costs and the fact that we're committed to making provinces whole at the end of a period of observation. We think it's been an appropriate balance. Could you talk about that issue in more detail?