Health committee  There are several figures floating around. The first estimate by PMPRB, by the government, came in at about $8 billion or $9 billion over 10 years. They readjusted that. It went up to $13 billion. An independent third party did another assessment. It's about $19.8 billion over 10

Health committee  Unfortunately, as an association representative, I'm not privy to the individual negotiations that take place between companies and governments—

Health committee  Yes, “private payers”, I should have said more appropriately. I just don't have a line of sight on that. Unfortunately, I can't help you.

Health committee  Again, through the chair, you're dealing with sensitive commercial issues. As an association representative, we don't have guidance, policies or best practices that direct how payers and companies deal with this, but understanding that this is a tension, I think if we were to get

Health committee  Thank you. Through the chair, I think that would be a good departure point for the discussion. If we can get to that table with the appropriate government officials and whoever else should be there—we can determine that—then I think that would be a very useful point of departure

Health committee  For clarification, it is the PMPRB regulations, the new regime that is scheduled to come into effect on July 1, in just three weeks' time. That is what is causing the problem. On the PMPRB itself, we are very happy to work with government to modernize it. Interestingly, by the w

Health committee  Just to clarify this, when I mentioned Alberta, it was not in terms of supporting a delay in the PMPRB. They may or may not. They haven't voiced that to us, but they have certainly voiced an interest in being competitive in the life sciences world. That's the piece that I've noti

Health committee  I prefer not to use the word “threat”, because none of the companies, none of our members, have ever viewed this as a threat. Rather, it's a reflection of the reality of the situation. I can comment quantitatively. I have an advantage that you don't and that no one on this commi

Health committee  We, as an industry, have pulled together on at least two occasions. I guess what we found was a good way forward and have presented this to government. I know that one of the honourable members of this committee did cite one piece of one of those offers, but it was an isolated pi

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  The whole-of-government needs to be there. I did reference that in my opening comments. At the moment, the PMPRB is within the Health umbrella, and everything we do has been put over to Health. Whenever we write to another department, it is sent over to Health, so we're stuck wi

Health committee  They do pay for the drugs, many of them, so they have a vested interest. We've had wonderful conversations with many of the provinces. Anie Perrault, earlier in this session, talked about the life sciences strategy in Quebec. We have had very good conversations in Ontario and wit

Health committee  I think this would be a beautiful start to a conversation. The concern is about the extreme nature of the impact of the regulations as they currently sit. The statistic that was just quoted a moment ago—the 90% and 99%—comes from a PMPRB assessment. It's not an industry assessmen

Health committee  I want to recall something that I heard from the Secretary of the Treasury Board, Peter Wallace, early in his tenure when he was appointed to address that question. He talked about how important it is for government not just to listen and walk through a consultation process, but

Health committee  Thank you for the question. I will answer in English, if I may.