Health committee  Okay. For me, the key point and cause of uncertainty is the desire of some to stretch the Patent Act into a consumer protection act. The Patent Act, in my view, is about regulating intellectual property and avoiding abuses of intellectual property. Its central purpose is not cons

Health committee  To me, the central problem is that they have to.... This is about the Patent Act. All of the arguments in favour of what PMPRB and the government are doing are around what I will call consumer protection. The Patent Act is actually about regulating the use of intellectual propert

Health committee  Thank you very much. First of all, there are the regulations and there are the guidelines. The regulations were decided by the cabinet of the Government of Canada. The problem of the unwise combination of risks—doing four changes all at the same time—is baked into the regulation

Health committee  Yes. Actually, in my opening statement I confirmed that, sir, but I'm happy to clarify. Our budget for the last four years has been about $220,000, on average. Yes, we seek unconditional funding from pharmaceutical companies.

Health committee  The majority of it. I don't have the number off the top of my head.

Health committee  I'd be happy to. Thank you.

Health committee  I appreciate some of the candour of Mr. Clark. I don't go around looking for fights with anybody. Let me do an analogy. Among other things, as well as being a patient and a patient advocate, I'm also a recovering politician. I'm not unfamiliar with the question of politicians loo

Health committee  If I may I'm going to use the example of ALS. You watched one of your colleagues in Parliament live through the disease and the finality of that occursion, as I watched my wife go through it. I want to put in a plug here for some wonderful folks at Health Canada. There was a dru

Health committee  Let's be clear. There have been some bad actors among some pharmaceutical company executives who have abused market power in some situations. There are notorious examples of this. With respect, however, they are not necessarily representative of all of the companies by any stretc

Health committee  I'd be delighted. Thank you very much. I'm a volunteer. There are a lot of patient organizations where the office is a desk in somebody's bedroom. That applies to our little PKU group. It's a very big deal to try to engage with PMPRB—I'll use them as one example but it's not the

Health committee  Quite simply, on the first point, the people who are most suffering from drug prices are the patients who are paying out of pocket. That represents about 21% of the total spend on prescription drugs in Canada. They don't have an ability to negotiate a better deal. The second gro

Health committee  Among our members, we have two patient organizations in the cystic fibrosis space, but I'm going to speak about my direct personal knowledge. I have a son with a rare condition, which is PKU, or phenylketonuria. He is on the first pharmaceutical and doing extremely well with th

Health committee  Chair and members, we appreciate your invitation to be here today, and we thank the committee and staff for their work throughout the pandemic challenges. I represent a coalition of 30 patient organizations, national and regional, working together through the Best Medicines Coal