Health committee  I think they will strengthen the ability of the prices review board to ensure that the introductory price on drugs is fairer, so my answer is yes. I also want to point out that the mandate of the prices review board is to basically, as you say, protect consumers from the impact

Health committee  I think that the prices review board has.... The countries that have been selected will enable us to ascertain where we fall within that range of comparable countries. In the past, it seems the prices review board has fallen midway between that group of comparative countries. I

Health committee  First of all, I think that although the industry feels its overarching responsibility is to supply a return on investment to shareholders, from my perspective, the overarching responsibility should be to ensure that Canadians have access to safe and effective medicines. That obvi

Health committee  As I mentioned, when Connaught was manufacturing drugs in Canada, they provided those drugs at cost to public and private insurers, and to consumers. Obviously they weren't paying dividends to shareholders, they weren't raking money off the top and so on and so forth, so they wer

Health committee  I think that the issue of evidence is very important. CADTH, for example, the Therapeutics Initiative and other similar agencies in Canada look at evidence and assess whether or not the asking price is worth a recommendation to provincial drug plans to list or not list. If the p

Health committee  I think that it can make contributions to that. One of the things that the prices review board does is it looks at the evidence that there is a therapeutic advantage in newer insulin products, just like it does for any other drug. If the guidelines are implemented and they are ab

Health committee  When you the say industry working together do you mean with each other, or with the board?

Health committee  Am I able to answer the question?

Health committee  I think that there's remarkable cohesiveness across much of the industry. I think that they act in concert. They are members of a large organization that lobbies on their behalf and that is threatening to pull out of Canada or not to supply drugs in Canada if the guidelines go th

Health committee  I agree that the guidelines are difficult to understand when you just read through them. I think that the period of consultation that was undertaken by the price review board really enabled people who were involved in those consultations or who were observing them to understand w

Health committee  I'm sorry. I didn't quite understand your question. I'm sorry to take so much time.

Health committee  I think that some of the guidelines on transparency will certainly, from my point of view [Technical difficulty—Editor] enable me to understand a lot better what the rationale is on the part of the industry and in the assessment on the part of the board to either approve a propos

Health committee  I think your preface to the question sort of answers the question. Companies invest in countries for, I'm sure, lots of different reasons, including the profit that they can make in that country. The pharmaceutical industry undertook certain obligations in the North American Fr

Health committee  Thank you, and many thanks to the standing committee for inviting our organization to appear before you today. I'm joining you from western Canada, the beautiful unceded territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish nations. Our group focuses on overall pharmaceutic