Program directory · Patented Medicine Prices Review Board Canada

Patented Medicine Price Monitoring Program

Department

Patented Medicine Prices Review Board Canada

Program code

BYU02 (PMPRB)

Core responsibility

Monitor Patented Medicine Prices

In Departmental Plans

2025-26 – 2026-27 · New since an earlier plan

What it does

In accordance with the Patent Act, PMPRB Staff reviews the price at which rights holders sell their patented medicines in Canada to identify instances where it recommends that the Chairperson issue a Notice of Hearing on the price of that medicine. The Chairperson then may decide whether to issue said Notice of Hearing. At the hearing, an impartial panel composed of Board members hears all the evidence from the parties and analyzes it in light of the factors set out in section 85 of the Act. If the Hearing Panel concludes that the price of a patented medicine is/was excessive in any market in Canada, it can order the maximum ceiling price to be reduced to a non-excessive level. It can also order a rights holder to make a payment to the Government of Canada to offset the excess revenues earned and can double the amount of this payment if there has been a policy of excessive pricing.

The main source of evidence used to assess whether a hearing should be held is the price information filed by rights holders with the PMPRB in accordance with the requirements and timing set out in the Patented Medicine Regulations. Specifically, rights holders file Canadian and foreign price information every six months for every dosage form and strength of every patented medicine they sell in Canada. This represents thousands of individual price filings. Timely review of these filings is at the heart the effective fulfilment of the PMPRB’s price monitoring mandate.

Source: the department's Program Inventory, via GC InfoBase.

History and lineage

First appears in the Departmental Plans in 2025-26. The data does not record when a program was created; it may be older than its first appearance here, which is limited by the sources (program spending starts in 2010-11, Departmental Plans in 2018-19).

Significant changes in scope and budget

Success criteria

The program's indicators from its department's Departmental Results Framework: the target set in each year's plan, and the result reported the following year. Source: GC InfoBase.

Spending and employees: planned against actual

Spending

Employees (FTEs)

Planned spending, plan by plan

Each row is one year's Departmental Plan and its forecast for the next three fiscal years; read a column down to see how the forecast for one year changed. The last row is what was actually spent. Click an amount for its source. Biggest changes in federal spending plans

Actual spending is from Departmental Results Reports and the Public Accounts, as published in GC InfoBase. FTEs are full-time equivalents.