Mr. Speaker, I would like to refer to the comments of the member for Vancouver Kingsway. As he remarked, the health committee did a rich study on this a couple years ago. The data is a little older than what Dr. Hoskins used, but the numbers in that report showed that the cost to the public was around $28 billion. That would be reduced to $20 billion with a national pharmacare program that followed the Quebec model. Of that, $13 billion is already paid for by different levels of government, so the gap is only about $6 billion.
Also from that report, we had testimony that said between $7 billion and $9 billion accrues as a cost to the different public systems by virtue of people not being able to take their medicines properly. In that sense, a national pharmacare program not only makes sense and is good for the country, but it will basically be covered off by many other lines on the balance sheet.