Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos says he has not exercised any undue political strain on the impartial federal company that regulates the worth of patented medication on its efforts to decrease medication prices.
NDP well being critic Don Davies is accusing the minister of halting the implementation of a brand new rule supposed to decrease the price of medication on the behest of drug corporations which have resisted the change.
The new regulation got here into power in July and would see the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board examine Canadian drug costs to these in a wider vary of comparable international locations.
The company was within the means of consulting on the finer particulars related to the rule in November when Duclos wrote to its performing chair and recommended the session course of be paused to provide drug corporations, affected person teams, provincial ministers and himself extra time to grasp the modifications.
One of the company’s board members resigned shortly afterward, saying Duclos undermined the board’s independence.
Duclos says that whereas he was required by regulation to supply his opinion on the session course of, the choice to pause enforcement of the brand new rule was in the end as much as the company.
Davies says the minister is standing with a pharmaceutical business that has stiffly opposed the brand new guidelines, reasonably than Canadians who want entry to reasonably priced medication.
Canada has third-highest drug costs on the planet, behind solely the United States and Switzerland.
