Feds’ pharma task force says cutting time to get medicines onto public plans should be a priority with a three-month deadline
Time-consuming drug-pricing negotiations and governments’ focus on the costs of medicines is harming Canada’s potential as an investment destination for pharmaceutical companies, says a report from the federal Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Sector Task Force, which is also telling Ottawa that it should implement solutions within three months.
As a result of the slower access to new medicines and those pricing priorities, “Canada is losing ground as a competitive destination for investment and innovation, global pharmaceutical companies are increasingly deprioritizing Canada for product launches, [and] foreign direct investment in clinical trials and manufacturing [is moving] in favour of other markets with more predictable policies, faster access, and stronger recognition of innovation value,” reads the report, which was released on July 24.
The creation of the task force was announced by Health Minister Marjorie Michel (Papineau, Que.) on March 18, 2026. The group’s mandate was to suggest ways to enhance Canada’s competitiveness as a way to ensure sustainable and reliable access to pharmaceuticals.
The group was led by Michelle Boudreau, a former associate assistant deputy minister at Health Canada, and Martin LeBlanc, co-founder and vice-chair of CellCarta Biosciences Inc. The remaining 24 members consisted of executives from pharmaceutical companies or industry groups with the exception of Suzanne McGurn, president and CEO of the federally-funded Canada’s Drug Agency (CDA). The CDA conducts health technology assessments (HTA), which are recommendations as to whether provinces and territories should add new medicines to their public drug plans.
While there are recommendations specifically for Health Canada’s regulatory approval processes, the report also says the department “performs comparatively well on regulatory review timelines.”
Where the delay seems to be a problem, as per the report, is when a drug reaches the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance (pCPA), whose members represent the federal, provincial, and territorial governments. The pCPA negotiates drug prices for the public drug plans—but it’s not the final step in terms of these negotiations.
The report states the pCPA takes approximately 195 days for its work, and then “individual provinces and territories make independent formulary listing decisions, which can take an additional 99 to 219 days, and may not be harmonized across jurisdictions.”
Another warning note for bureaucrats is the impact of their “price containment” efforts to bring down what governments pay for these medicines. Saying that the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB), CDA, and pCPA all play a role in overseeing drug prices, the reports adds, “These mechanisms play an essential role in ensuring value for money, affordability and sustainability, [but] they can contribute to delayed or foregone market entry for certain products—particularly high-cost or specialized therapies.”
The report says the government should take “deliberate, bold and swift action.” Recommendations for Health Canada, CDA, pCPA, and the PMPRB come with a directive that they should be implemented within three months. (Other recommendations on subjects such as translational research, an industrial strategy, and data are provided with a longer timeline of three to nine months.)
One recommendation is that Health Canada adopt “more systematic” reliance on information from “trusted foreign regulators" who have already reviewed the drugs being studied by the Canadian department. It should also “move quickly” to expand the list of the types of drugs that would be included in this reliance framework to include oncology, HIV, antimicrobial drugs, and rare disease drugs, among others.
The department has already started moving to this process, announcing on July 15 that a new ministerial order will allow it to use decisions and documents by some foreign regulators—European Medicines Agency, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products, and the United Kingdom’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency—to help it “review certain parts of drug submissions.”
The order does not apply to all medicines submitted for approval.
The report tells the CDA that it should “redefine value frameworks” by ensuring that a “multi-dimensional framework”—which considers the value of a drug to a patient, the health system, and “society” (such as through a consideration of resulting productivity)—be put in use “to recognize the value of innovation.” It also recommends the CDA stop publicly publishing its price-reduction recommendations for medicines.
Similarly, the report recommends the pCPA consider the “full value” of medicines when it is negotiating prices: “In doing so, it should consider including the broader patient, economic, and societal impact while recognizing the global competitive pricing environment.”
Health Minister Michel and Industry Minister Mélanie Joly (Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Que.) welcomed the report in a statement, saying, “The Government of Canada will carefully consider the Task Force's recommendations as part of its efforts to improve affordable access to pharmaceuticals while strengthening the growth and resilience of Canada's life sciences sector.”
Pharma sector urges feds to consider its economic impact on Canada
The issues brought forward by the task force’s report have been long-standing frustrations of those who work in the pharmaceutical sector.
UCB Canada—which manufactures medicines for dermatology, neurology, rheumatology, inflammatory disorders, and rare diseases—recently published an economic report showing its financial contribution to the Canadian economy: $187.1-million to GDP, and $73.2-million in federal taxes, both between 2023 and 2025.
The company currently employs 120 people in Canada, said Rodrigo Reis, general manager at UCB Canada.
Reis said his company decided to commission the report, produced by Deloitte, to commemorate its 20-year presence in Canada. But it’s also a tool for conversations with health departments—which tend to focus on the costs of medicines—to outline the company’s contributions to the economy.
“The change in paradigm that we're trying to make is really, how can we change that paradigm from a spend to an investment? … How can we change [the thinking] from a cost centre to [thinking that] by investing in innovative pharmaceuticals, we are improving the health of the population and we are impacting the economy?” Reis said.
Innovative Medicines Canada published its own report, also produced by Deloitte, this past April. It states the patented medicine sector contributed $22.2-billion to Canada’s GDP in 2023, through employment, labour income, and revenue for government. This does not include the economic impact of clinical trials, patient support programs, and productivity, which is an additional $2.7-billion.
Bettina Hamelin, president and CEO of Innovative Medicines Canada, said the pharmaceutical industry “actually has a much bigger impact on our economy than people imagine.”
Hamelin was a member of the federal pharmaceutical and life sciences sector task force. Both Hamelin and Reis, who was not involved with the group, spoke to The Hill Times on July 22, prior to the task force report release.
The executives’ message echoes one found in the task force report: "Canada's domestic pharmaceutical sector, spanning innovative drugs, vaccines, biopharmaceuticals and generics represents a critical pillar of the national economy, supporting tens of thousands of high-value, skilled jobs across the country. … Collectively, [their] activities generate billions of dollars in annual economic output and position the sector as both an innovation engine and a strategic industrial asset.”
Hamelin said her organization decided to produce its economic report in response to geopolitical shifts and the global shift in pharmaceutical policy which puts the “limelight” on Canada’s “vulnerabilities” connected to the sector.
One of those geopolitical shifts is the American government’s decision to implement a most-favoured nation (MFN) policy, which is forcing pharmaceutical companies to negotiate prices that are comparable to those in countries with 60 per cent of the U.S.’s gross domestic product per capita.
The U.S. is known for having the highest drug prices in the world. The change motivated by President Donald Trump has drug companies wondering if they should bring their new medicines to this country in light of the impact the move would have on what could potentially be charged south of the border.
Reis said his company is “reassessing” whether to bring a new neuroscience drug to Canada, but that a decision has not been made.
“I think what the U.S. administration is intending to do with MFN is really to rebalance the level of prices, and especially I would say the net prices, globally. The argument is that they are kind of bearing most of the costs for funding the innovation [through higher drug prices],” said Reis.
“I think it's a reality for every manufacturer that when you look globally to our sales, the majority of the sales are coming from the U.S. So, any impact in the U.S. is going to have a global impact,” Reis said about why companies like his are reviewing their decisions to launch medicines in Canada.
In April, Hamelin told the audience at the CDA’s annual symposium that her organization conducted a survey of members, who said 16 medicines were not being brought to Canada and that the launch of 32 medicines were on hold as a result of MFN.
When The Hill Times asked Hamelin if she had updated information on impacted drug launches, she said no but that Innovative Medicines will be conducting another survey in the coming weeks.
In another echo of the task force report, both Reis and Hamelin highlighted the time it takes to complete drug pricing negotiations in Canada.
Reis said it takes an average of two years because drug companies first negotiate with the pCPA and, if an agreement is reached, then conduct a separate negotiation with the health department of each province and territory.
“The provinces still want to have the, let's say, opt-in and opt-out option so it's not guaranteed that all of the provinces are going to refund that treatment,” Reis said.
Reis said in his home country of Brazil, where he worked for UCB before moving to work in the company’s Canadian office, the federal government “takes charge” of the negotiation, Reis said.
Reis said another difference is Canada does not have a separate expedited pathway to approve medicines for rare disease, unlike the U.S., Brazil, and Europe, which do.
Hamelin said the two years in between Health Canada’s approval and the completion of drug pricing agreements is “too long.”
“I just wrote an op-ed … it essentially says that we're able to send a Canadian around the moon in 14 days,” Hamelin said, referring to astronaut Jeremy Hansen’s space mission this spring. “But it takes us two years after Health Canada says a medicine is safe and effective to actually get this medicine to Canadian patients.”
Hamelin spoke of the task force’s work in her discussion with The Hill Times, saying on July 22 she was unsure of whether the report was being made public. She did not discuss the recommendations.
“The work that we did with the government [is to] … actually articulate a roadmap of what needs to happen for that time to be significantly shortened, because you can imagine, for a patient suffering from cancer, that can be the decision between life and death,” she said.
tsanci@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times