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President Donald Trump recently called out 24 countries, Canada among them, for not paying fairly for patented medicines. Our artificially low patented drug prices, he argues, leave U.S. citizens to bear too much of the costs of development and approvals of new medicines. In his eyes, we’re freeloaders. “When foreign governments extort unreasonably low prices from U.S. drugmakers, Americans have to pay more to subsidize the enormous cost of research and development,” he said last month.

He’s right. This is part of Trump’s larger vision for trade: that the U.S. will cease subsidizing foreign markets. Canada has to grow up in our approach to trade and regulation.

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Canada’s prices for patented drugs are artificially low because they are regulated by the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB). Our prices are 25-per-cent below median foreign-patented drug prices, and far lower than American prices. On top of this discount, the federal government is proposing complex changes to PMPRB drug-pricing regulations that would reduce patented prices by a further 20 per cent and diminish drug-company revenues in Canada by approximately 25 per cent. If this strikes you as egregious expropriation, you’re right.