Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  The proposal is available online for anyone to download.

Health committee  You're referring to the right to sell fee, which is one of the fees that we are proposing in the cost recovery in the proposal. It is a fee that we would apply to companies to have right of access to the market. It's a fee of just over $500 for a regular company, and there would be a 25% reduction if it's a small business.

Health committee  With regard to the right to sell fee that we're talking about and the approximately $30 million, these would be the revenues that would be used to cover postmarket activities, to cover the surveillance of advertising and the assessment of adverse drug reactions.

Health committee  The overall cost of the program, based on the current proposal, is about $100 million.

Health committee  Before the proposal it was about $46 million, so we do need to ramp up the program.

Health committee  With regard to what, exactly?

Health committee  On the 53 recommendations, the majority of them were pretty much addressed, with the exception of cost recovery. Cost recovery is one that's outstanding. The committee at that time recommended that the government look into it and take an approach to make sure we consult with industry to develop a cost recovery system.

Health committee  Those 53 recommendations go back to 1998, when the standing committee at that time recommended—

Health committee  We implemented new regulations in 2004. Then, from there, we made several improvements to the program, both operational improvements and improvements in terms of making sure that we use a risk-based approach to the regulation of these products and that we provide appropriate guidance and direction to industry wanting to market products in Canada.

Health committee  It's 63% of 6,000.

Health committee  We certainly put in our proposal measures to reduce the impact on small businesses. As we've already discussed, we've received a number of comments, and we know that we have to take a look at the proposal we've put forward. We'll consider other potential measures to address businesses and perhaps to look at micro-businesses, even, and see if there are additional mitigation measures we can put in place to be able to support those businesses, because we understand that they are important for Canadians.

Health committee  We're hearing feedback through our consultation with all of the affected stakeholders. We've also received quite a large number of comments, up to about 5,000 comments through our consultations. We're taking that back, and we're reflecting on the proposals to put forward, and we'll make adjustments and do additional—

Health committee  What we did was an assessment of what fees would need to be charged in order to support the program that we currently have and that we'd like to bolster in order to respond to the recommendations from the Auditor General that identified a number of gaps.

Health committee  Thank you for the question. Our cost recovery proposal was developed based on strict Treasury Board guidelines for the development of costs, using a similar process as is used for other types of health products in terms of how these costs are developed. In terms of contributions of businesses to the economy, in terms of whether they pay GST or contribute in other ways, that does not factor into the development of the model for the cost recovery proposal.