Evidence of meeting #18 for International Trade in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was industry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:40 p.m.
Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University, As an Individual
Quite so. And this explains the importance of comparing the words of the industry, which is promising greater spinoffs if we increase its income, with real figures, which show that that is not at all what happens.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
I am trying to understand the link between the free trade agreement and this. You are asking that we negotiate better prices for drugs, but will the R&D not take place in Europe?
12:40 p.m.
Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University, As an Individual
In my opinion, if we want to attract investment in research, inflating the prices is not the way to go.
In order to justify including provisions in the free trade agreement on reforming the drug intellectual property regime, people said that this would make Canada more competitive and allow it to obtain the lion's share of investment in R&D. I would like to point to the fact that we included these provisions and imposed no conditions. Having omitted to do so, we will not be obtaining the spinoff benefits we would like to see.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Thank you.
Mr. Elliott, we met before when I had a few questions on my BlackBerry. I'm quite happy with the BB7, but I think I'm going to go to a Z30. Thank you for that.
I have one quick question for you. You were saying that we need a better dispute settlement mechanism in the Canada free trade agreement with Europe. What exactly are you looking for? What is the problem you're having right now, and what would you like to see in the agreement?
12:40 p.m.
Senior Director, Government Relations, BlackBerry
First, thank you. I know that you and some of your other colleagues were on the pilot projects for the new BB10. I really appreciate that and I'm glad you're upgrading already. I highly encourage everyone to upgrade.
It is not so much improvement in a dispute resolution mechanism as much as actually having it in a timely fashion. There are some strategies where a country might put up a non-tariff trade barrier and know it's going to take two or three years for it to work through a dispute settlement mechanism. Certainly in a technology world when you're looking at an 18-month maximum product turnover, but usually 6 to 12 months, two to three years is far too long.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
What would you like to see in the agreement, a quicker kind of resolution?
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
How would you go about that when there are other sectors that would probably not be able to do all that?
12:40 p.m.
Senior Director, Government Relations, BlackBerry
If there were carve-outs for the technology field, that would be wonderful. I know some others would probably not agree to that, but just a short, quick timeframe for doing all resolutions.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
I'd like to thank our guests for being here today to share their particular views and areas. These are two very divergent series of interests.
Mr. Elliott, I'd like to start with you. Am I behind the times with my BlackBerry Bold? Is it time for me to consider something else?
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
I'm one of those antiquated technology types. The reason I haven't failed the test is I didn't take it. We'll do this a step at a time, I think.
Congratulations. We all know the story of BlackBerry and its history right near my city of London, Ontario, and Waterloo, its great history in a short period of time, its dominance, and then some of its challenges and its resurgence. It's an interesting process. I commend you and your colleagues for that.
As I've been thinking, I heard you say something about proverbially punching above our weight. Sometimes I think what people forget is that Canada has a population of some 34 million, give or take a person or two who may or may not live in London. There are 500 million in Europe, a considerably larger population. When you think of what we've done with North American free trade, there's a 900-million person market. You talk about punching above our weight when we will have free trade deals with the two largest, thus far, and most sophisticated consumer groups in the world.
Again, sometimes people forget too about what we are trying to do with this European Union agreement, CETA. We're trying to put in an arrangement that is pro-consumer, pro-business, and that will lower costs. What I particularly don't seem to understand is why there is the hesitation. There are going to be wrinkles that we work through in any process of any agreement. I get somewhat frustrated, I must admit, when people are inclined to be very negative about what opportunities it gives to Canada. We're a trading nation; it's been our history.
This brings me to my first question. Where would BlackBerry be without exports?
12:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Government Relations, BlackBerry
It would be a much smaller company, for sure.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Significantly, I'm sure. I know we can say that about many.
You made a comment about the use of the negative list, and you thought that was a good approach. Could you expand on that a little bit? Just give a short sentence to it. Why do you think the negative list approach is good for Canada and for your firm?
12:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Government Relations, BlackBerry
Again, it future-proofs an agreement. There's no way any regulator, any legislator, any court could predict where technology's going to go, where industry's going to go, where cheese may go. The ability to say that unless you have something specifically on the list up front, everything is carte blanche, it goes through, that really speeds up any agreement in terms of future disputes or future-proofing.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
You made the comment as well in your testimony, which I thought was interesting, that in any future deal the European Union negotiates with any other country, Canada will be its beneficiary. It really is adding to the point you just made, is it not?
12:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Government Relations, BlackBerry
Absolutely.
Limiting my comments to the tech sector, we're good at software, hardware, and making things.
With a lot of start-up companies accessing foreign markets, they don't understand or they don't have the expertise in terms of navigating through all these different trade rules. When things are open, it allows them to focus on what they do best, value-added to their stakeholders, to hire more employees, and hire fewer trade negotiators or trade brokers to get through the maze and myriad of rules that some countries have.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
You indicated in testimony that your firm now deals with some 100-plus countries around the world. To work through the various rules and regulations with respect to these various countries, have, for example, the Canadian trade commissioners been of any benefit to you?
12:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Government Relations, BlackBerry
Absolutely. Actually I had the opportunity of speaking with Minister Fast this morning. Any time we have the chance, we sing the praises of the trade commissioners across the globe. They've been integral in terms of making interventions on behalf of BlackBerry with different countries. They've opened doors for us. That is absolutely, bar none, the best investment for BlackBerry for all the tax dollars that we paid. They've been integral. I can't stress how much they've been integral in our success internationally.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
I appreciate your comments and wish you success.
Monsieur Gagnon, thank you for your testimony as well. You give an interesting insight, and again it's somewhat different from our BlackBerry friends.
I saw your pedigree. You have a very impressive background. There's your study on pharmacare and the pharmaceutical industry. That's obviously been a life passion for you.
I'm trying to get a personal sense from you. As a matter of social policy, is it your personal belief that drugs should be available to all Canadians at no cost?
12:45 p.m.
Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University, As an Individual
In terms of social policy this is where they are moving in the United Kingdom. Yes, I think when it comes to drugs, thinking about prescription drugs as a commodity that should be ruled based on supply and demand, especially based on the budget constraint of the different individuals, for me it is really bad policy. Especially if we have a system organized based on private insurance, private insurance is basically creating loyalty of the worker with the employer, which is not a bad thing, but what is good as well is labour mobility. The more you can have labour mobility by having coverage for everybody so they can go work anywhere they want where they are the best fit to work, yes I think it is the best policy.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
If you don't think that Canadians should pay for their drugs, that brings a whole series of questions to my mind. One of them is where will that cost come from?
It's interesting that we had the brand name drugs in front of us for testimony, Rx and D, and we had the generic drug manufacturers, the senior companies in front of us giving their testimony. They both felt that the deal was something that they could live with.
It makes me wonder, perhaps tied into your first response and it may be evident, is it your view that Canadians pay too much for generics?
