Minister of Health Jean-Yves Duclos speaks to reporters on the sidelines of the Liberal Convention in Ottawa, on Friday, May 5, 2023. Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos was warned that pharmaceutical companies had steadfastly refused to engage on drug-price reforms before he urged an independent federal agency to pause those reforms in favour of more consultation, a 2021 memo shows.
In 2017, the government announced new rules to bring prices down by expanding the number of countries Canada compares with. Those changes were supposed to be introduced in 2020 but were delayed multiple times because of the COVID-19 pandemic before eventually coming into effect last July. “After five years, myriad policy proposals and many hundreds of hours of consultation, it would appear the pharmaceutical industry is simply not amenable to any measures that would further constrain its ability to sell patented medicines in Canada at free market prices,” the acting chair of the agency’s board at the time, Melanie Bourassa Forcier, wrote in the memo.
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