Health committee  Yes, and thank you very much for this question on the supplementary estimates. It is a significant sum. The background here is that this is a program for which we have a base budget that this committee would have seen in the main estimates, but in addition, we go through a proce

Health committee  Madam Chair, I think I'll ask my colleague from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Mr. James Roberge, to answer the question.

Health committee  Again, Madam Chair, I think this is an important and substantial part of Health Canada's supplementary estimates. As was noted, it's $56 million to continue the resolution health support program under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. Under that agreement, as

Health committee  I'm not aware of the precise study that's been cited, Madam Chair, but I think there are a number of aspects that countries tackle to try to get their drug prices down. Some of it is in things like price control. Canada has the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, for example,

Health committee  Thank you very much, and I will try to be brief in my answer, too. We have been working extensively with a number of partners. I think we've all understood from the situation that it is no one area of government or one sector that can handle all of this. We worked with industry

Health committee  Everyone in the field would acknowledge that this is going to be an ongoing issue that needs to be managed. That's why we need to bring the parties together. We are satisfied that the parties are very much alerted to this. We are dealing with issues of sole sourcing. How do we

Health committee  I think there will be ongoing challenges.

Health committee  Madam Chair, I think this is a very important question and I'm very pleased to address it with the committee. The cost of pharmaceuticals is an issue worldwide. It is an issue for health systems generally and there are many facets to it. The minister referenced the appropriate u

Health committee  Again, all the community-level programs for suicide are retained.

Health committee  Yes, so—

Health committee  Yes, that's right.

Health committee  Again, I think this is obviously an extension of the supplementary estimates that we're speaking about that talk about the impacts on staff. There were about 200 vacant positions that we had been, in a sense, not staffing for some time, so we offered up those. In addition, we e

Health committee  Our reduction in science was very limited. We wanted to make sure that we retained—

Health committee  There are some reductions. There may be about 3% reduction, is the number that comes to mind, in areas that were of lower priority research, but all of the research areas, the scientific areas involved in compliance and enforcement, all of the drug reviews the minister spoke of,

Health committee  The major transfer is the CHT. We have a number of small partnership arrangements with provinces and territories. One example is the Quitline. There is a phone number and web link on every cigarette package. We have a number of agreements, contribution agreements, partnership arr