Views of Canadians about changes proposed by the PMPRB

Life Sciences Ontario commissioned Ipsos to examine the views of Canadians about changes being proposed by the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board. These proposed changes are designed to lower drug prices in Canada as Canadians pay roughly 25% more than the median price for the same drugs than those in other developed countries. The objective of the guidelines is to allow for the calculation of a national ceiling price. Critics of this plan argue that the new regulations are excessive and would reduce the availability and timely access of new medicines in Canada by deterring pharmaceutical companies from making available best-in-class drugs in Canada. Ipsos surveyed Canadians to determine their level of knowledge of the PMPRB and measure their level of support/opposition to proposed PMPRB changes.

Questions were run on the Ipsos online omnibus the week of December 13, 2020. The survey polled a sample of 1,005 Canadians, nationally balanced across age, gender, region, and education. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure the sample’s composition reflects that of Canada’s population according to the latest (2016) census. The precision of online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case the results are considered accurate to within +/- 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what the results would have been had all Canadian adults been surveyed. The credibility interval will be wider for subsets of the population.