Mr. Speaker, the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, PMPRB, is an independent, quasi-judicial, administrative agency, created in 1987 under the Patent Act.
The PMPRB is responsible for regulating the prices that patentees charge, known as the “factory-gate” price, for prescription and non-prescription patented drugs sold in Canada to wholesalers, hospitals, pharmacies and others, for human and veterinary use, to ensure that they are not excessive. The PMPRB regulates the price of each patented drug product sold in Canada including each strength of dosage form.
The PMPRB regulates the first sale of a patented drug in Canada from the manufacturer. While a manufacturer’s sale of a patented drug product to any pharmacy in Canada falls squarely within the jurisdiction of the PMPRB, the subsequent sale of the product from the pharmacy to a consumer does not. Thus the circumstances of such pharmaceutical sales (i.e. whether to a resident of Canada or a person outside Canada) as in the case of cross border drug sales is outside the PMPRB’s mandate.