Health committee  I certainly agree with there being a committee, but I don't know whether I would call it an oversight committee. That doesn't seem compliant with the laws and regulations that govern us. We definitely have a lot of back and forth with other stakeholders to help us do our job pro

Health committee  By the end of fall 2021. Before any impact of these guidelines and regulations makes itself felt, we'll have that plan in place. I can assure you of that.

Health committee  No price changes can take place as a result of the new regime until January 2022. I think that's what I'm saying.

Health committee  Yes, they absolutely will. There are 4,300 people in Canada who suffer from this awful disease, and Canada is renowned because of CF Canada's very comprehensive and exhaustive database of all of those patients. That's a great tool for us to rely on in being able to track those t

Health committee  There is no empirical evidence to back up that statement, and to the extent that there is empirical evidence, it would suggest a contrary conclusion.

Health committee  It's both a fact and a myth. As I said, no two regimes are alike. Canada is the only country with a universal health care system that doesn't include prescription drug coverage. Therefore, the idea was that we would try to approximate what we would be able to secure by way of our

Health committee  I think that question should be directed at the companies. I know there's been a lot of attrition in the pharmaceutical industry footprint in Canada in the last 10 or 15 years. I believe the Prime Minister spoke to that in question period a few days ago. Whether this will exacerb

Health committee  I don't think we're making that assertion or that claim. We don't have a policy responsibility to encourage innovation. We're an economic regulatory body that ensures that prices of patented medicines aren't excessive. There are a lot of other things going on within government, b

Health committee  It's true that we are 2% of the world market, but that's not a negligible amount. That makes us a top 10 market, so it's not surprising that we would account for a significant amount of clinical trial development. I will say that pharmaceutical patentees, from the industry, accou

Health committee  That's an excellent question. We're working very hard on what we're calling a guidelines monitoring and evaluation plan. It's a very audacious, ambitious plan. We are going to be reaching out. It has four different buckets of things that we'll be looking at and evaluating. There

Health committee  Yes, I have. I will say that we've adopted a policy on a temporary basis to only look at these vaccines on a complaints basis. If we get a complaint from a provincial or federal minister of health about the price, that's when we'll look at it. The companies have already committe

Health committee  I'm not sure whether there's anything we can do within the context of our drug regulatory processes that could change the basic ratio that we're seeing today. The key distinguishing factor or feature between us and these other countries you point to that have lower prices for mor

Health committee  I think a one-stop-shop would be ideal, but when you break down many of the dysfunctional and intractable issues in Canada, a big part of the reason we sometimes can't overcome them is that we're a federation. That's my own personal opinion. I do think there's a lot of goodwill

Health committee  I do.

Health committee  It is. I think that's your challenge. I don't know if it's really my place to advise you in that regard. It's important to understand a little bit of history here. Maybe that would help you at least contextualize it. It used to be that the federal government contributed to char