Economist

Overview

The pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance (pCPA) brings together provincial, territorial, and federal governments for the purpose of increasing and managing access to clinically relevant and cost-effective medicines. Through collective negotiations, the pCPA has realized overall savings for governments of $3.94 billion annually for brand name drugs and $935 million annually for generic drugs totaling $4.87 billion annually (as of April 1, 2025).

The pCPA offers a 100% remote (within Canada) work environment.

About the role

The economist is accountable to the senior manager, Analytics, by providing expertise and leadership to support pCPA’s decision-making for the planning, coordination, and management of negotiations using health economic evaluation and other financial analyses to obtain the best possible value and maximize drug plans’ investment in the health care system.

The economist holds a degree in economics, finance, business administration, or a clinical, scientific discipline or medical sciences. They have at least five years of working experience in economics or a related field. The ideal candidate has a comprehensive knowledge of the Canadian pharmaceutical industry, as well as government and business processes. They have excellent communication skills, work well with various partners, and bring proven experience leading and working with multi-disciplinary senior-level professionals.

• Assist with collaboration of the pCPA and provincial/territorial partners to develop negotiation strategies and mandates and to support the development of provincial/territorial negotiation standards and best practices.
• Conduct comprehensive analyses, synthesis, and reporting of research (e.g., financial systems, utilization, environmental scanning) throughout the negotiation and planning process, including but not limited to developing approaches to negotiation, position alternatives, and impact analyses, and provide advice on regulatory, contract dependencies, and resulting legal implications for senior management review.
• Analyze internal and external issues affecting negotiations, determine impacts of approaches and decisions, and develop options and solutions.
• Ensure effective project leadership; establish project plans and parameters; facilitate project stages, transitions, and issue resolutions.
• Support the development of processes and structures to support negotiations; undertake consultations and negotiations; resolve arising problems; and prepare final deliverables for senior management decision-making.
• Support and recommend policy and program changes for pCPA.
• May lead or co-lead all aspects of negotiations with drug manufacturers on behalf of the pCPA, including developing mandates, objectives, and secure outcomes aligned with pCPA direction and strategy.
• Conduct targeted re-analyses of cost-utility, cost minimization, and budget impact analyses, including modelling of current and hypothetical future confidential pharmaceutical prices, and evaluate the plausibility and impact of differential assumptions made by manufacturers and health technology assessment agency reviewers.
• Critically appraise complex confidential manufacturer price proposals and contract elements linked to patient-level, jurisdictional, indication-specific, or national drug utilization.
• Prepare pCPA strategies for outcome-based offers, considering valuation, administration complexity, and pan-Canadian impacts.
• Assess manufacturer outcome-based proposals critically.
• Plan, conduct, and support broad quantitative analyses of the pharmaceutical marketplace, including evaluating savings from pCPA agreements, potential timelines for market access and market exclusivity expiry, and the financial impact of changes in the marketplace for generic pharmaceuticals.
• Assist in collecting or organizing systematic access to data for members of the AQI team, pCPA Corporation staff, or jurisdictional pCPA contacts.
• Collaborate with senior economist(s) and the senior manager, Analytics, to ensure the appropriateness of work products and exercise good judgment in proactively identifying complex issues for review.

• Contrib…