International Trade committee  Generally, I think there will be more profitable molecules available for the manufacturer. Metformin is quite a popular drug, so they would decide—

International Trade committee  I think it's the simplicity of manufacturing certain products or what fits into their machinery best. Lots of decisions go into deciding whether they will make a molecule or not. We do know that when this price compression came in over the last 10 years, we lost I'm sure 30% to 4

International Trade committee  In relation to data protection, it is continuing the same, from what I understand. They did have an extension. The data protection was going to last for 10 years initially, and all of a sudden, on December 11, when CUSMA was signed, it came out at eight years, I believe. I'm stil

International Trade committee  In the current version, it looks like there will be no change for data protection for biologics—for biologics only.

International Trade committee  I'm kind of talking about two groups of drugs. One is the generic experience for simple molecules in the last 10 years. We've had the pan-Canadian pharmaceutical alliance controlling prices, pushing them down and decreasing the number of manufacturers. We've also had these drug c

International Trade committee  One way to prevent it is to let the market forces work for themselves. In terms of compression, we've had the experience with generic products being compressed in price, or being controlled in price. We have manufacturers dropping out of the manufacturing business for certain m

International Trade committee  I can probably correct that. Metformin is a very popular diabetic drug, and it used to be produced by about 14 manufacturers. When compression came from the pan-Canada decision, where the Government of Canada arranged pricing for these products, they compressed the price, and the

International Trade committee  We brought along an example of my drug order sent in on Saturday. We ordered 111 products; 33 of them were short. This is not even a list of all the items we would use. We're short, currently, about 60 molecules. Every time I hear about a busload coming up here from the U.S.... I

International Trade committee  I'll go first.

International Trade committee  Thank you. We appreciate the opportunity to address this committee. Being able to describe what is happening on the ground floor in our businesses can be mutually beneficial for this and future legislation. I grew up on the farm too, but I ended up owning a pharmacy. I'm the ow