Canada

Canada's government policies are encouraging drugmakers to refuse to supply the Canadian market, creating shortages and cycle of regulation driving out more suppliers, according to a Canadian think-tank, the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute.

The recent decision by USA-based Bristol-Myers Squibb to refuse to market Erbitux (cetuximab), a colorectal cancer treatment, in Canada was caused by the government's refusal to allow the drug to be sold at a price acceptable to the manufacturer.

The Fraser Institute's director of health and pharmaceutical policy research, Brett Skinner, writing in the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper, argued that "the decision not to sell a promising cancer treatment in Canada is a totally predictable response to pharmaceutical policies that ignore pharmaceutical economics."