A long-awaited report into several high-profile resignations at Canada’s drug price regulator is calling for changes to how members of the government interact with the quasi-judicial body as well as the pharmaceutical industry.
The House of Commons health committee report, made public this week, has 10 recommendations stemming from a string of events that seem to have indefinitely sidelined Ottawa’s attempts at drug price reform.
The controversy began in November, 2022, as the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board was in the middle of public consultation on new guidelines that were necessary to implement a series of regulatory changes designed to rein in the escalating cost of prescription drugs – changes the pharmaceutical industry publicly opposed. That November, then-federal health minister Jean-Yves Duclos asked the PMPRB to suspend the consultation process, stating in a letter the board hadn’t fulfilled its requirement to brief him.
Around the same time, Innovative Medicines Canada, an industry group representing the pharmaceutical industry, made a similar request for the consultation to be suspended.
The step by Mr. Duclos was highly unusual and, according to e-mail exchanges and other documents later released at House health committee hearings, prompted three members of the PMPRB to resign.
Douglas Clark, former executive director of the board and one of those who resigned after Mr. Duclos’s letter, told the committee last year that he had personally tried to reach out to the minister’s staff to arrange a briefing on several occasions, only to have requests unanswered or not followed up on.
Last year, he told the committee Mr. Duclos’s letter caused “grave concern,” particularly since suspending the process was “precisely what the industry had called for.”
Some of the other recommendations in the newly published House of Commons report include a call for the government to spell out the mandate of the PMPRB; for members of the board to review its internal operating rules to avoid any misunderstandings; and for Ottawa to review how it enacts drug price regulatory reforms.
Matthew Herder, a former PMPRB board member who also resigned last year in the fallout from Mr. Duclos’s letter, said in an interview that the report is a disappointment. Most of the 42-page document summarizes the events that led up to the resignations and what witnesses told committee members without weighing in on the merits of the evidence, Mr. Herder said.
“I think it is a huge letdown,” he said. “I’m highly skeptical anything will come of it.”
He highlighted that some of the recommendations seem to suggest the problems originated with the communication processes at the PMPRB, despite evidence and testimony pointing to a troubling pattern of industry influence and interference from the federal health minister, Mr. Herder said.
The office of current Health Minister Mark Holland said in an e-mail it’s reviewing the committee’s recommendations and will provide a government response in due course.
Since the consultation report was suspended in late 2022, the PMPRB reforms have still not been enacted.
Steven Staples, the national director of policy and advocacy for the Canadian Health Coalition, said the lack of pricing reforms is a major concern, given the rising cost of prescription drugs.
The federal government has tabled new pharmacare legislation that would cover the cost of some diabetes medications and contraceptives, and that will be essential to helping control the cost of some drugs, Mr. Staples said.
Carly Weeks