NDP MPs Don Davies and Heather McPherson organized a ‘Create Your Canada’ contest in their respective ridings, where students can propose ideas that are tabled in the House of Commons as private member’s bills.
No longer content to wait for the Liberals to make good on their promise, the New Democrats tabled their own pharmacare legislation in the House of Commons Tuesday.
The NDP and Liberals struck a confidence-and-supply agreement last year that would see the NDP support the government on key votes to hold an election off until 2025 in exchange for progress on NDP priorities.
The minister has defended his actions, stating he does not provide direction to the board but does participate in consultations before new guidelines for drug prices are issued. On Tuesday, Duclos’s office said it was the minister’s “duty to work with all actors, from patients and … the industry, to make sure Canadians have access to the medication and vaccines they need.”
Even so, there’s “no doubt that Minister Duclos and the Liberal government are being pressured by other forces,” Davies said.
“What we want to do is add some pressure on the other side of this. Do I trust them? Yes. And I hope that they will do the right thing.”
The letter is at the heart of an investigationby the health committee, launched earlier this year at the request of NDP MP Don Davies, who alleged Mr. Duclos interfered with the independence of the drug regulator when he asked Prof. Bourassa Forcier to suspend the consultation.
Recent testimony at the House Heath Committee by the health minister and former members of an organization that regulates drug prices in Canada has left members grappling with “two thoroughly contradictory versions of events,” says NDP MP Don Davies.
Two former insiders at Canada’s drug price regulator testified Tuesday that interference from federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos raised questions about the government’s closeness to the pharmaceuticals industry and jeopardized efforts to control spiralling prescription drug prices.
Douglas Clark, theexecutive director of the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, told the House of Commons health committee on Tuesday that he was taken aback when Mr. Duclos sent a letter in November asking the agency to suspend its public consultations on price reforms.Mr. Clark said such a suspension was “precisely what the industry had called for.”
"I totally support the pandemic prevention preparedness plan, and couldn't be more opposed to the review provision of the bill," NDP health critic Don Davies told the committee.
Dental benefits for Indigenous people should be improved if the new national dental insurance plan offers better or more accessible services, NDP health critic Don Davies said Wednesday.
Dental hygienists are preparing for an influx of Canadians who haven’t been able to afford to have their teeth professionally cleaned for years – or even decades – when the federal dental plan rolls out.
Don Davies, NDP health critic, said the plan was meeting a “chronic unmet primary health care” need.