This report presents an overview of North America’s natural gas resource endowment, recent historical gas price patterns, and the continental natural gas supply, demand, and out look. It then examines the uncertainties and risks that constrain the development of natural gas production and transportation facilities, and identifies barriers to such investment.

This paper compares the economic performance of Canada’s health insurance system against the health insurance systems of 27 other countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Economic performance is defined by the availability of medical resources and the output of medical services, as well as the associated level of national health spending as a percentage of GDP. The value for money produced by a country’s health insurance system is defined relative to the economic performance of the health insurance systems of its international peers . Our analysis uses the most recent internationally comparable data reported to the OECD by its member countries, current to the year 2007, for the 28 OECD countries reporting sufficient data for comparison.

Since 2005, this study has regularly compared Canadian and American retail prices for an identical group of the 100 most commonly prescribed brand-name (mostly patented) drugs and the 100 most commonly prescribed generic drugs in Canada. This year’s study focuses exclusively on the price difference between the two countries for the 100 generic drugs that were most commonly prescribed in Canada in 2008.