Mr. Speaker, on the topic of pharmacare specifically, one reason it is so critically important is that if we are going to have a health care program to support people and take care of people when they get to the hospital, which is part of the health care programs throughout the country, we may as well be taking care of them in the preventative stages. If we, as the minister alluded to, set up programs to help people take care of themselves, such as pharmacare and getting them access to the medicine they need, we can avoid having a lot of people end up in the hospital.
Likewise, when we look at these particular programs, we know they are not being fully used. A lot of people, especially seniors, up until recently, because they did not have access to the medicines they needed, may have been making very difficult decisions about whether they should take half the dose they were recommended instead of the full dose because they can save a bit of money there.
Can the minister explain and touch on why it is so critically important to make sure that people are taking the full doses they are prescribed, rather than trying to find ways to save money by reducing their doses?