House of Commons Hansard #64 of the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was companies.

Topics

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:05 a.m.

Edmonton—Spruce Grove Alberta

Conservative

Rona Ambrose ConservativeMinister of Health

moved that Bill C-17, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:05 a.m.

Conservative

Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand in the Parliament of Canada today to endorse Vanessa's law, the protecting Canadians from unsafe drugs act.

I am honoured to be a member of the first Canadian government ever to tackle the insidious and largely hidden problem of the injuries and deaths routinely caused by prescription and over-the-counter drugs. I thank two consecutive ministers of health and the Prime Minister, who acted boldly to make Canadians safer, directly taking on the most influential industry in the world, big pharma, and the status quo in the practice of medicine, which has been corrupted by that industry.

Today is a milestone for me and the Young family as well as for the Government of Canada. I stand here today due to a tragedy in my family that took place exactly 14 years ago last week, on Saturday, March 18, 2000. Without warning, our 15-year-old daughter Vanessa, for whom this act is named, fell down dead in front of me, her heart stopped by the Johnson & Johnson blockbuster prescription drug Prepulsid, a drug we later discovered she should have never been given. Despite emergency ambulance services and the valiant efforts of doctors at two hospitals, Vanessa never regained consciousness and died the next day. We never had a chance to say goodbye.

On March 20, 2000, I began the journey that led me to the House of Commons this morning. The facts of this tragedy shock every layperson who hears them, yet I was to quickly discover that the insiders, the doctors, researchers, and people of big pharma, were never shocked. They knew all along that potentially life-threatening drugs were being pushed on patients with non-life-threatening conditions, as the drug business had become all about Wall Street, and they were benefiting financially big time.

Our doctors are groomed through highly sophisticated big pharma relationship marketing programs. They get their first free lunch the first week of medical school. They then go on to naively accept up to $4 billion a year in North America in gifts, lunches, dinners, event tickets, and free trips from drug companies, imagining that those debts of gratitude do not change their prescribing behaviour. Sometimes I would ask them, “Do you think a drug company takes a bunch of doctors to Bahamas out of kindness?” They also accept and hand out, without any prescription, $3 billion a year worth of free samples of new prescription drugs, creating debts of gratitude in their own patients. It is a dangerous practice, because patients get no safety warnings.

In November 2010, 18-year-old Brennan McCartney, of Bolton, Ontario, took a free sample of the anti-depressant Cipralex, with no safety warning about suicide, which is written right on its label. He went out and hanged himself from a tree in a public park.

Four doctors knew that Vanessa was taking Prepulsid for bloating and a mild form of bulimia, yet neither Vanessa nor we, her parents, were given any warning that the drug was already responsible for 80 deaths. Why? How could this happen to the beautiful, innocent child her doctor described as the picture of perfect health? How could four doctors, people we totally trusted, allow Vanessa to continue to take a drug that could stop her heart?

I began the next day to find out how Vanessa died and why, and I have uncovered many dark secrets. Prescription drugs, taken as prescribed, the right way, are the fourth leading cause of death in North America. There are over 106,000 deaths a year just in hospitals and another 100,000 outside hospitals. That is about 20,000 deaths a year in Canada and 200,000 serious drug injuries.

The drug industry representatives who infest Parliament Hill love to talk about when doctors make errors or when patients use the wrong drug or take too much of a drug. What they never talk about is when a drug used the right way kills or injures a patient, causing 10,000 deaths a year in Canada. In fact, one in nine patients in Canada who goes into hospital will suffer a serious adverse drug reaction in hospital.

All drugs are poisons. Any drug can be toxic; it is just a matter of dose. All drugs cause adverse effects. Some people think over-the-counter drugs are totally safe, yet ordinary Tylenol, acetaminophen, causes hundreds of deaths every year and more cases of acute liver failure than all other medications combined. Too much taken with alcohol can destroy one's liver. Has anyone's doctor ever mentioned that?

Ordinary aspirin and ibuprofen cause thousands of deaths every year across North America, mostly from internal bleeding, yet most patients have never heard this. Why not? There is only one reason. It is because the people who market the drugs, big pharma, do not want patients to know the truth. That would reduce sales.

What happened to Vanessa and Brennan McCartney could happen to anyone who takes drugs without proper safety warnings. Nothing significant has changed since 2000 except the current introduction of plain language labelling for drugs and this bill.

Vanessa's law will empower the Minister of Health to compel drug companies to change their labels to clearly reflect the true risk to patients from their drugs. Patients would be empowered to make informed decisions to take the drugs or not. Patients could then take drugs only when they are relatively safe.

Twenty-seven drugs have been pulled from the Canadian market since 1997 for injuring and killing patients. Prepulsid is one. Another, the painkiller Vioxx, killed 55,000 to 65,000 people worldwide in four years on the market. Why do most Canadians not know that? It is because the drug companies never admit that their drugs have harmed anyone. They spend months and months investigating serious reactions, and then they attempt to blame the patient. They conclude that patients must have taken too much, that they must have had a previously undiagnosed and unknown conditions, or that it must have been a combination of the company's great drug with the patients' other drugs. They then contraindicate their drug with the other drug and change the print on a 50-page label, which most doctors and few patients ever read. Then they carry on promoting it, including for off-label use, meaning for conditions for which it was never proven safe or effective.

Doctors can prescribe any drug at any time for any condition for any patient, even if it is never proven safe for such use. In fact, 70% of doctors prescribe off-label at least some of the time. Modern medicine can be the wild west.

That is what the Johnson and Johnson detail reps did to Vanessa's doctors. They whispered to them that Prepulsid was effective for teens who threw up after meals, yet it was contraindicated and dangerous for anyone throwing up. That was the official warning, but they did not whisper that in her doctors' ears, because Prepulsid was heading for blockbuster status. It was a golden calf, with $1 billion a year in sales.

Just before Health Canada is about to take action to expose risks, the drug companies will pull drugs off the market voluntarily. That way they can keep selling them in over 100 other countries in the world, because they have never admitted that the drug could cause anyone harm. That is the drug business.

Vanessa's law will give the Minister of Health the power to order drugs that present as serious or imminent risk of injury or death off the market without delay. Had this been done with Prepulsid, instead of negotiating over weeks with Janssen-Ortho, Prepulsid would have been recalled. Vanessa would be alive today, along with many others.

Drug companies refuse to provide the true number of serious adverse drug reactions to Health Canada. They report what they hear about, but what does not appear on their label is this crucial fact: only 1% of serious adverse drug reactions are ever reported by doctors. Whatever the number is on the label can usually be multiplied by 100 to get the true number, which the drug companies never do.

Most doctors never report adverse drug reactions. Outside of the doctors I have worked with in prescription drug safety, I have never met a doctor who has reported one.

Despite my advocacy for over 14 years that reporting adverse drug reactions saves lives by providing a widely based early warning system for dangerous drugs, the Canadian Medical Association and the Ontario Medical Association, to this day, do not support making adverse drug reaction reporting a standard practice or mandatory. Doctors are fooled by their own negligence in not reporting life-saving information. Patients die as a result.

On October 9, 2011, 18-year-old Allison Borges of Oakville was found in a stairwell of her residence at Queen's University, dead, having suffered a pulmonary embolism caused by Apri 28, a birth control pill that her doctor told her was safe. She received no warning that the newer birth control pills are more likely to cause deadly blood clots than the older ones.

No woman should be given a birth control pill without a clear warning about deadly blood clots, yet it happens all the time. Sadly, 18 year old Marit McKenzie of Calgary suffered the same fate in January 2013. Had Vanessa's law been in place and implemented, both deaths would have been prevented.

Vanessa's law will impose, for the first time, a duty on health care institutions to report all serious adverse drug reactions, which will capture any adverse drug reaction that causes patients to end up in a hospital or clinic. That will hopefully capture the majority of serious adverse drug reactions so that officials can be alerted to dangerous drugs faster. This will help get them off the market faster and save lives. We must rely on the provinces to persuade doctors themselves to stop covering up adverse drug reactions caused by their prescriptions.

Over half the serious side effects of new drugs will not be revealed during testing. In fact, in the first two years on the U.S. market, one in five, or 20% of new drugs, will be pulled off the market for injuring or killing patients or will be assigned the highest level of warning, a black box warning, to be handed to each patient with the prescription. It is a more effective warning than Canada has ever had and that, under Vanessa's law, it will have.

In May 2007, 18-year-old Sara Carlin of Oakville stopped taking her prescription anti-depressant Paxil abruptly. Then she doubled up, to catch up, two days later. She had no warning that Paxil could cause suicidal ideation and akathesia in those circumstances. Her father found her the next day, hanging by her own hand, in the basement of their home. Neither Sara nor her family had heard about the five “Dear Doctor” letter warnings Health Canada had sent out about Paxil.

Vanessa's law will for the first time allow the minister to order assessments of a drug, including conducting tests or studies and reporting them to Health Canada, and to change the drug labels to better reflect the newly identified risks. Proposed regulations for drug labelling will empower Health Canada to order drug companies to issue labels and patient information leaflets that are written in plain language, with the rare but dangerous potential side effects listed up front, on page one, where patients need to see them. Patient can then decide if they want to accept those dangers or not.

In 2003, Dr. Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline, the world's second largest pharmaceutical company, made this statement at a scientific meeting, thinking there were no journalists present: “The vast majority of drugs—more than 90 per cent—only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people”.

What this means is that with a worldwide market of about $800 billion for prescription drugs, as much as $400 billion a year is not only wasted but millions of patients are exposed to dangers with no chance of benefiting.

According to the Canadian Pharmacists Association, between $2 billion and $9 billion a year is wasted in our drug system. This means that as patients increasingly reject the drug industry's pill for every ill, our health care system would save billions of dollars, hopefully to be invested in preventive care.

Seventy percent of adverse drug reactions are preventable. They are caused by the aggressive over-marketing of drugs, misleading sales pitches, and the covering up of harms that victimize patients.

How could any moral corporate executive push a drug that could stop a child's heart to treat bloating? That is exactly what the executives at Johnson and Johnson's drug arm Janssen-Ortho did, and they broke the law in doing it. It is quite normal in the drug business.

Drug safety is about one thing: does the potential risk of this drug outweigh the potential benefits for me? Yet the big pharma companies do everything they can to make sure that patients have no way to answer that question. They exaggerate the benefits and they hide the risks.

I know that this sounds outrageous. It sounds like a father who lost his daughter and then lost his objectivity, so let me give a few factual examples of where big pharma companies have openly admitted to crimes to increase sales of their drugs.

In 2012, GlaxoSmithKline, the people who made our H1N1 vaccine, paid a fine of $3 billion, the highest in history, to U.S. governments for illegally marketing three drugs: Paxil, an anti-depressant, which causes suicides; Avandia, a diabetes drug that causes heart attacks and strokes; and Wellbutrin, another anti-depressant with similar adverse effects. Yet GlaxoSmithKline had grossed $26 billion in sales for these three drugs in the previous six years. With markups on drugs at more than 100% and 1000%, a $3 billion fine is really just the cost of doing business for GlaxoSmithKline. It is kind of like a speeding ticket.

Shortly after Vanessa died, I asked adverse drug reaction expert Dr. Neil Shear, in Toronto, why drug companies do not take dangerous drugs like Prepulsid off the market. Here is what he replied: “In the drug industry, killing people is not bad for business. As long as it's not too many”. Nothing has changed since that time. Big pharma companies put the legal costs for injuries and deaths right in their business plans.

Here are some more examples of big pharma corporate criminals. I will read a short list from a list that could be pages long.

Merck has paid $1.6 billion in settlements since 2008, in part for paying illegal kickbacks to health care providers. Ely Lilly paid $1.3 billion in 2009 for illegally promoting Zyprexa, leading to the deaths of many seniors. Novartis paid $422 million in 2010 for off-label promotion of Trileptal. Forest Labs paid $313 million in 2010 for off-label promotion of Celexa and Levothroid. Allergan paid $825 million in 2010 for off-label promotion of Botox. AstraZeneca paid $520 million in 2010 for misleading doctors and patients about the safety of Seroquel. The list goes on, and these are just since 2008.

The question is, how do the big pharma companies get away with this?

They have power and influence. They are some of the wealthiest companies in the world and have no loyalty to any country, but, above all else, despite the thousands of deaths, no big pharma executive has ever gone to jail.

Imagine if murderers, rapists, or extortionists could simply negotiate payments with some government official to keep out of jail and to keep on doing what they are doing. The only way these companies will ever stop their corrupt practices is: one, if the practices become unprofitable; and, two, if those responsible face real jail time. Vanessa's law, for the first time, would impose tough new penalties for unsafe products, increasing fines from $5,000 a day to $5 million a day and including jail time for up to two years. That is the only way to actually get their attention and change their ways. And if these serious violations are caused intentionally, court-imposed fines could be unlimited.

My hope is that when life-threatening dangers are intentionally covered up, judges will fine offenders the entire amount of their sales of their blockbuster drug, or more, because nothing else will change their practices.

Vanessa's law would be the beginning of the end for the unscrupulous and corrupt marketing practices in big pharma companies in Canada. It would no doubt reduce drug injuries and deaths in Canada by thousands. It is much needed and it is long overdue. We can never have Vanessa back, in this life, or Sara Carlin, or Allison Borges, or Brennan McCartney, or Marit McKenzie, but we can change things moving forward. We can do what governments are supposed to do: protect vulnerable people.

Vanessa's law represents the highest calling of a government, in my view. When the death of an innocent child can lead to definitive action by the Government of Canada to help prevent others from the same fate, our democracy is at its best.

Every school day, across Canada, millions of children sing:

From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

However, that promise has to be a two-way street.

Vanessa Young would be proud to see that with Bill C-17, Canada is standing on guard for its school children, its seniors, and its other vulnerable patients.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:20 a.m.

NDP

Megan Leslie NDP Halifax, NS

Mr. Speaker, the member for Oakville and I go back to 2008. We were elected together. I know his passion for this subject. I have read his book. I have had personal conversations with him. I have to say it was pretty thrilling to hear that speech. We do not agree on many things, he and I, but we agree wholeheartedly on this. In many ways, I wish that I had the courage to give a speech like that. It was incredibly powerful. I want to stand here and publicly give him my support and tell him that it takes a lot of courage to say things like that in this place. Everything he said was the truth.

He talked about uncovering dark secrets and, boy, has he ever, and that big pharma does not want patients to know the risks and, boy, does it ever not want that to happen.

I want to talk about next steps. One step that I see coming after this legislation would be to include mandatory registration of clinical trials and public disclosure of those findings. I recognize that is not in the bill right now. I recognize that the bill is a great first step, but I want to keep going on this. He said it is the beginning of the end.

What are his thoughts on next steps? Would that be one of them?

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:20 a.m.

Conservative

Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member opposite for her kind words and for her support on this issue, over a long time.

I agree with the member. The transparency in research and clinical trial research is a critical part of improving the data the drug companies use to get drugs approved in the first place.

They are very secretive about it. They refer to it as “commercial rights” or “trade secrets”, or whatever, but I do not believe it is.

When a pharmaceutical company hires someone to do a clinical trial, they normally ask the researcher to sign a contract, which is basically a gag order that says the company can stop the trial at any time and he or she must never talk about it again. If the trial is not going well for the drug, that is what they do. No one knows the trial was even started. If the trial shows the drug might be harming patients, they stop the trial and the researcher can never talk about it again, or never get work again as a researcher. They could do a number of trials like that on a drug until they finally find a researcher who gets them the positive result they want.

I agree with registering all trials, that it should be done, and that even if the trial is stopped early, all the data should be published.

I see the CMHA has requested or suggested that this go into Vanessa's law. I can only say that the Minister of Health is willing to consider amendments to Vanessa's law and I would be very pleased if that were put into the bill.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:25 a.m.

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB

Mr. Speaker, I too would like to applaud the member for Oakville. There is no doubt that due to his efforts and great amount of courage, we actually have this bill before us today, and it speaks volumes in what determination and the love of a relationship can bring. Ultimately, as we go through this bill, we want it to go to committee.

One of the questions that came to my mind is on the Government of Canada’s ability to compel manufacturers to recall. Can the member provide some insight on that particular issue?

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:25 a.m.

Conservative

Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON

Mr. Speaker, the issue there is that the pharmaceutical industry, when it starts to get reports of serious adverse drug reactions, generally investigates them and drags them out and tries to blame them on the patients and on another drug. Or, if the company admits that its drug combined with another drug caused a serious adverse drug reaction, it then changes the label, which is a 50-page document that most doctors never read and patients never see. Then it continues marketing the drug.

In the case of Propulsid, the drug that caused Vanessa's death, the manufacturer did that over 10 years. It changed the label five times, knowing that no one ever reads the fine print on a label, and it added certain contraindications. It contraindicated it with erythromycin and clarithromycin over the years. Finally, just a few weeks before Vanessa died of heart arrhythmia from Propulsid, the manufacturer sent out a letter to all doctors, which the pharmaceutical companies can easily do and do all the time. The letter said not to prescribe Propulsid or give it to patients unless they have done an EKG first. That was the first warning that really meant anything to doctors because even a doctor who is in a big hurry with a room full of patients will look at that warning and wonder why doctors would give an EKG to a patient for a drug. Vanessa's doctor did not see that. He was in Florida on a holiday, and he came back and we know the result.

Dragging out the negotiations of changing the wording on the labels is one of the tricks pharmaceutical companies do to keep the drug on the market and keep the sales going, and it causes injuries and deaths. With the new powers under Vanessa's law, the minister would be able to examine the situation, and if that is what is going on and there is an imminent danger, she could order the companies to take the drug not only off the market but also right out of the supply chain.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

March 28th, 2014 / 10:25 a.m.

Simcoe—Grey Ontario

Conservative

Kellie Leitch ConservativeMinister of Labour and Minister of Status of Women

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his eloquent speech.

Obviously one of the worst nightmares for a parent or for any individual is an allergic reaction or an adverse drug reaction. Even as recently as last week, while I was in my other official capacity, a parent phoned me at home at 11:30 at night to say, “I have called 9-1-1; I am heading to the hospital myself, but can I meet you there because I am so concerned about my child's reaction to a drug they have just taken”. Obviously this is something that hits close to home, and parents become anxious every time they have to move forward to ensure they are taking care of their child under the right circumstances and that the drugs they are using to ensure their child becomes healthier are actually safe.

My question for the member is this. With respect to this serious issue of adverse drug reactions, what would be the reporting mechanism and how would that be enforced, to ensure that children across the country are safe?

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:25 a.m.

Conservative

Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON

Mr. Speaker, currently Health Canada has a reporting mechanism on its website. Any doctor, health care professional, or individual citizen can report an adverse drug reaction. As I mentioned in my speech, only about 1% do get reported. Doctors are reluctant, for a whole range of reasons.

However, using the standards of practice for hospitals, Vanessa's law would insist that people working in health care institutions, clinics, and hospitals, report adverse drug reactions. It is something they are already doing in the institutions. They already have the information and they already keep it somewhere. I do not think it is particularly onerous. We would simply ask them to send the information to Health Canada so that it can look for patterns and for an early warning on drugs that may be risky or drugs that are being used in the wrong way.

Exactly how that is going to work is to be determined, but we would catch most of the serious adverse drug reactions because they are the ones that end up in hospital. If we can get the provinces to convince doctors, in some way, to start reporting out of their office on their own computers a suspected adverse drug reaction and create a really robust database from across Canada, we could even reduce more injuries and deaths.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:30 a.m.

NDP

Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. gentleman for his tremendous speech. I remember a speech like that a while ago from Mr. Chuck Cadman, when he was here, after the loss of his son. I take to heart the member's speech. I can assure him that nobody on this side of the House would ever accuse him of bias with respect to a bill that would have the potential to save thousands of lives now and in the future.

My question to the member is this. Because these drug companies are all big multinational or international companies and we have trade deals, for example, with NAFTA and others, does he foresee any problems with respect to the bill being challenged on a legal front through areas like Chapter 11 of NAFTA?

Can he also say what other countries, like France, Germany, Britain, Holland, Australia, or the United States, would do in terms of Vanessa's law? Is there anything similar out there that we can mirror as well? It would be interesting to know of his research on what other countries are doing concerning this very important issue.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:30 a.m.

Conservative

Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON

Mr. Speaker, the United States has generally had a more robust warning system for patients and doctors. I mentioned the black box warnings it has for the 200 drugs considered to be the most risky. By law, that warning is supposed to be handed to patients when they pick up their prescription.

The European Medicines Agency is ahead of us in some ways. It will often take a drug off the market before it is taken off the market in the U.S. or Canada. I mentioned Avandia, a diabetes drug that causes heart attacks and strokes. It was taken off the market in Europe in 2009. It is still on the market in the United States and Canada, with beefed-up warnings, but Europe seems to be a little more progressive.

Health Canada has recently begun communicating more with the best regulators in the world, which would include the FDA, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the U.K., and the European Medicines Agency, and sharing practices. Through them, it has gotten a lot of ideas on ways to handle these issues for Vanessa's law. I think if the House agrees to pass the bill, it will put Canada in the forefront and will increase communications with these other bodies, so that the drug companies cannot keep a drug on the market in one country, take it off in another, and pull the wool over the eyes of doctors and patients.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:30 a.m.

NDP

Megan Leslie NDP Halifax, NS

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to this bill. I am pleased that the bill is in the House.

As I said in my questions to the member for Oakville, that speech took a lot of courage. I do not think my speech will be quite as courageous. The words that the member for Oakville said are exactly the words I wish I had said in this place.

The bill is long overdue and I am glad it is here. I am not going to criticize the delay, because it is here. I do think it needs to go a bit further, but it is a great first step.

When I was the health critic a few years ago, I knew nothing about the pharmaceutical industry. As a critic, people started giving me books and articles and I started talking to experts. I went around Canada and talked to all kinds of folks working on this issue. When we start peeling back the layers of the onion, we realize what a messy, dark world that is. The power and control that pharmaceutical companies have is quite amazing, as is the trust we give them. We hand over our lives in this way because we think they know what is best.

One example I often used when I was talking to people was the therapeutics initiative in British Columbia, which is an arm's-length body, not a government body. There are experts on that panel who make recommendations about what drugs will be covered under British Columbia's pharmacare program. One might wonder why we would have to do that. Can one not just look at the label? Can one not just find out if a drug is worth covering or not?

We are not always told the truth. Drug companies will go to great lengths to ensure that their drugs are on those pharmacare lists because they have a lot of money to make from it. Sometimes they will take a drug and change one molecule and say it is a new breakthrough drug when it is just one molecule different from the old drug that works. Maybe they are not making enough money off it. That one molecule change can do a lot when it comes to having an impact on the people’s health.

I am reminded that I need to seek unanimous consent to split my time. I hope the chamber will allow me that.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:35 a.m.

Conservative

The Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Does the hon. member have unanimous consent to share her time with a colleague?

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:35 a.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:35 a.m.

NDP

Megan Leslie NDP Halifax, NS

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Alfred-Pellan.

Vioxx was touted as an incredible breakthrough in pain relief. Why do we need a breakthrough in pain relief? We have ibuprofen and acetaminophen. Some of these drugs do a bit of wear and tear on our stomachs and can cause internal bleeding, and some people have died even from something as simple as ibuprofen.

The big breakthrough drug, Vioxx, which goes under many other names, but that is probably the most common name, was touted as being a pain reliever that would not cause bleed-outs. It was approved by Health Canada, so people put a lot of faith in that approval. The thing was that there were no published clinical trial reports about this drug. We did not know if it did not cause bleed-outs or if it was a better pain reliever, and yet Health Canada approved it.

When Therapeutics Initiative did an analysis of this new drug, it said it would not recommend it to be covered by B.C.'s pharmacare. Since the clinical data was not published, it was a bit suspicious about what was going on, and it said no. Then the lobbying began, heavy-duty lobbying to government to get the drug on the pharmacare list because a lot of money was at stake.

We have heard of grassroots organizations that are in our communities and work together. In dealing with pharmaceutical industries these groups are termed astroturf groups. Astroturf groups are not grassroots. They seem to be grassroots, but they are actually funded by the drug companies. These astroturf organizations are funded by drug companies, but they are made up of just regular folks, and a lot of them probably really believe what they are being told. For example, if I have constituents calling me and saying they would like to talk about a drug that is not covered, I do not know that they are getting funding to do this from a pharmaceutical company. These groups pop up and, as politicians, we know it is hard to say no to constituents. A lot of pressure was being put to get Vioxx on the list.

Therapeutics Initiative did the right thing, because eventually Vioxx had to be pulled off the market, because it was killing people. It was not any better than ibuprofen or acetaminophen for a headache, and while it may not necessarily have caused internal bleeding, it did cause heart attacks. If I have the choice of living with a migraine for a few days or having a heart attack, I am going to live with the migraine. Many people have come forward and said that because of Therapeutics Initiative, hundreds of lives were saved in British Columbia.

All Canadians deserve these kinds of safety standards, not just British Columbians, because at the very least our federal government is here to protect us, to make sure we are safe, to make sure we are not being sold a drug that is actually going to do more harm than good.

Partway through his speech, the member for Oakville said that he saw today as the beginning of the end for drug companies and the hold they have on us. I hope he is right. I am standing here with my hands clasped and I hope he is right, because they are so big and they make so much money.

The global pharmaceutical industry is one the most profitable industries in the world, if not the most. The industry is worth about $300 billion U.S. a year, and that is expected to rise to $400 billion in the next three years. Only ten drug companies cover one-third of the market; six are in the U.S. and four are in Europe. It is predicted that North America, South America, Europe, and Japan will continue to account for a full 85% of the global pharmaceuticals market well into the 21st century.

The World Health Organization has spoken out about this. It has said there is such pressure to maintain sales that now there is, in its words:

...an inherent conflict of interest between the legitimate business goals of manufacturers and the social, medical and economic needs of providers and the public to select and use drugs in the most rational way.

There is this tension between sales and our lives, our health, and our safety. This is particularly true—and it is the same with the World Health Organization—when we think about where we are getting our information about these drugs. We are getting that information from the companies. They are telling us which drugs are most effective.

We rely on our doctors, but they are busy folks. They are courted by the pharmaceutical companies. They are given pages and pages of information, in which everything is embedded; then there is a little quick piece that says to try Vioxx because it is great for headaches. We do not get the proper information because it is coming from the companies themselves.

This bill is a good step in the right direction, because there are some key things in it. It would allow the minister to order a recall on drugs. That is a really important thing we need to see. It would allow the minister to order a manufacturer or importer to modify the label of a drug to update it on side effects or health risks associated with it. It would allow the minister to order a review of a drug and require that a copy be given to him or her.

It would do some good things. It needs to go further. The House heard my question to the member for Oakville about publishing clinical trial data. That is incredibly important.

I will sum up by saying that, if there is one thing that the federal government is here for, it is to protect us and keep us safe. We need the federal government to fulfill that role. I am encouraged to hear that the minister is open to some amendments. I would also be encouraged to hear if the minister were open to more legislation, because this is incredible, and if we are going to see this as the first step in tackling the pharmaceutical industry, there logically has to be a next step. I look forward to that next step as well.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB

Mr. Speaker, we recognize how important it is to improve patient safety. There is no doubt about it; this is a bill we want to see go to committee. We heard the presenter talk about the possibility of amendments, which would be great to see brought into place.

However, it is more than just legislation. One could argue that we need to ensure there are resources in place to ensure we are able to enforce the new measures. This is not something we should be taking lightly.

For a great deal of time now, my colleague, the Liberal Party critic for health care, has talked a lot about the health care accord and the importance of getting and achieving a health care accord, which in essence would ensure money into the future for our provinces. Different stakeholders need to be brought to the table because of the whole jurisdictional issue.

I wonder if the member might want to provide some comment on the importance of resources and the different stakeholders making sure we are able to implement legislation of this nature?

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:40 a.m.

NDP

Megan Leslie NDP Halifax, NS

Mr. Speaker, of course resources are needed that go hand in hand when it comes to drug safety. I will say, though, that I am really going to fight for changes in legislation here.

I was doing media commentary in 2012, about Alysena 28, the birth control pill. There were about two or three rows of sugar pills in this birth control package, so women were at risk of pregnancy. For some women, it is a very serious medical issue if they get pregnant. People make all kinds of decisions about why they are taking birth control.

I did media for the NDP when that was happening. I was so frustrated because it was actually a pharmacist who disclosed that this was happening; it was not even the government. I wondered where the government was and why it was not doing something about this. The government actually could not say to the company that it had to recall it.

There are some legislative places where we need to give powers to the minister. Of course, then, the next step is making sure there are resources, so the minister has the ability to enforce them. We do need to make those changes to legislation.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:45 a.m.

NDP

Murray Rankin NDP Victoria, BC

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Halifax for her very passionate response to an equally passionate and powerful presentation by the member for Oakville.

In the member for Oakville's speech, he referred to the fact that GlaxoSmithKline, as just one example, paid a fine of $3 billion, having made $26 billion in the period of time at issue. However, what I see in this bill before us, if I understand it properly, is that the maximum is $5 million and imprisonment, I am pleased to see. As the member for Oakville pointed out, no big pharma rep has ever been to jail.

As you talk about the amendments you would be seeking in this legislation, would you support a larger fine beyond the $5 million that is currently in the bill, in order to address the huge discrepancy that the member for Oakville brought to our attention?

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10:45 a.m.

Conservative

The Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

I would just remind the hon. member for Victoria to address his questions to the Chair, not directly to the member for Halifax.

The hon. member for Halifax.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:45 a.m.

NDP

Megan Leslie NDP Halifax, NS

Mr. Speaker, I would really look forward to a discussion at committee about just that, hearing from some experts like Joel Lexchin, for example, from York University. That is because the point of fines in this case would be to deter. Companies are making unfathomable amounts of money, so if the fine is not high enough, it is just the cost of doing business. It is much like the cost of doing business is sending their pharmaceutical reps for a cruise after they score a good contract, or down to the south with their families for a couple of weeks. This really happens. It is a gravy train, if one gets a job as a pharmaceutical rep.

Therefore, if a fine is just the cost of doing business and they are still going to make tonnes of money because they have changed one molecule in a drug, then it is not serving the purpose, is it? We will have to ask that at committee.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:45 a.m.

NDP

Rosane Doré Lefebvre NDP Alfred-Pellan, QC

Mr. Speaker, today I am honoured to be speaking to Bill C-17, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act.

Before I begin, I would like to thank the hon. member for Oakville for the courage and determination he has shown in having this bill introduced in the House and in supporting it, as it touches him personally.

It is very important that we debate such a sensitive and important bill. The federal government must shoulder its responsibilities regarding the Food and Drugs Act. It is good that we are debating this today. I would like to assure the hon. member opposite, the member for Oakville, that the official opposition will be supporting the bill.

I understand that the minister would be open to amendments. We would be more than pleased to participate in the debate and put forward amendments to Bill C-17 so that it can be improved and so that we create the best legislation possible. In that way, we can keep cases like Vanessa's and so many others from happening in Canada.

The NDP will be supporting Bill C-17, which makes several key improvements to drug safety laws.

First, it allows the government to recall drugs or order the distributor to take corrective action to remedy the problem with the drug. That is an extremely important element, one that I will come back to later on in my speech.

Second, it allows the health minister to order a manufacturer or importer to modify the label of a drug to update the side effects or health risks associated with it. The minister can also order a review of the drug and require that a copy of the review be given to the department. In addition, the minister can require manufacturers to update Canadian information about the risks associated with their drug even if the safety risks were discovered in other countries

This bill is a good first step in establishing a comprehensive drug plan and in setting the course for our society on this issue. After calls from many health care professionals and advocates, this bill will finally grant the health minister the necessary power to pull unsafe drugs from the market and ensure better labelling of possible adverse effects of drugs.

We support this legislative measure and we hope that even more practical measures will follow. We support this bill, but there is still much to be done to improve drug safety measures. We will therefore propose amendments to improve this bill in committee.

We hope that our efforts will lead to a comprehensive piece of legislation that will include follow-up by Health Canada on adverse drug reactions, increased transparency with regard to the assessment of prescription drugs and a better system for communicating the risks associated with drugs to health care professionals and patients, in particular.

As I mentioned, this bill will make it possible for the government to compel manufacturers to recall drugs and order distributors to take corrective action to resolve problems with their products. In this regard, at the end of her speech, my colleague from Halifax gave the example of a mistake that was made in 2011 by the manufacturer of Alesse 28.

Alesse 28 is a type of birth control pill that generally works on a 28-day cycle. Women take the product for the first 21 days and then they take a placebo for the remaining seven days. The placebos are often just sugar pills. The problem that occurred had to do with the content of the pills. Rather than containing 21 birth control pills, a package of the product contained two weeks' worth of placebo pills.

Obviously, this can have a rather serious impact on a woman's menstrual cycle. I do not necessarily want to get into the details of how the menstrual cycle works, but having good birth control that works is really very important.

Since 1969, the year in which woman were given access to oral contraceptives, thousands of women in Canada and throughout the world have been using this method of birth control. I have used it myself, as many other female members of the House likely have, and many Canadian women use it.

It is an extremely important part of our family planning, for all sorts of reasons. There are various reasons why women use birth control. A drug that does not have the anticipated effect can have an extremely harmful impact on the health of women and on family planning.

These thousands of women trust in the system, in our health care system and in the drug manufacturers. The women affected by this problem experienced low hormone levels, which caused a number of problems. The main purpose of the product is to prevent ovulation. The placebos prevent that prevention, so to speak, and allow the woman to ovulate. That can have a serious impact on family planning.

Bill C-17 could do something about this. How did people find out about this mistake? Pharmaceutical companies were certainly not forthcoming about it. Pharmacists were the ones who sounded the alarm after noticing that there was a problem with the drugs they were selling. If the pharmacists had not spoken up and told people about the situation, the pharmaceutical companies surely would not have told anyone. There is no telling how far the situation might have gone.

It is good to know that with Bill C-17, new provisions will enable the federal government to do something. Currently, it cannot do anything about situations like that. The government has no power to act. It is very important to create legislation to address these situations. I am speaking on behalf of many women who believe that the federal government should have a say in the matter. We have to make sure that women have access to the best possible drugs, the best possible oral contraceptives.

Once again, I would like to thank the member for Oakville for introducing this measure in his bill.

As I said, we will support this bill at second reading, and we will probably put forward a number of amendments in committee just to make it better. That said, we do think that it is a step in the right direction.

We would like to see several more things in this bill. I know that I will not be able to go into detail because my time is almost up, but the bill ought to include a number of measures, such as optimal prescribing practices to ensure that Canadians are being prescribed the most appropriate drugs. Public disclosure of clinical trial results is also important because, in Canada, the results of numerous clinical trials are never published or made available to the public. We are also asking the government to strengthen the common drug review.

In closing, I would like to say that Bill C-17 is a step in the right direction and that the federal government has to step up to its responsibility with respect to the Food and Drugs Act. I am also pleased that the government is so open to amendments that might be put forward. I am very happy that we are talking about this bill in the House. I can assure the member for Oakville that we will vote in favour of the bill and that we will make sure it is the best it can be.

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10:55 a.m.

Conservative

Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all the members for their contributions to the debate and their kind words today.

The member for Victoria raised an issue, and I guess he did not hear what I said in my speech. I mentioned that for situations of criminal negligence, where a pharmaceutical company covers up the risk of one of their drugs and it leads to serious harm to patients, there is authority for unlimited fines.

If a judge saw fit, he or she could fine the drug company, for example, the total amount of sales for that drug for the period it was on the market. That would be the absolute best way, and I would suggest the only way, to stop these corrupt practices.

The key problem with the pharmaceutical industry and why Vanessa's law is so important is that CEOs of pharmaceutical companies, like all companies that sell shares on the market, have to by law increase shareholder value. On the other hand, there is no law against putting a risky drug on the market because all drugs cause adverse effects.

It is the level of the risk that has to be monitored. That is why Vanessa's law is necessary.

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10:55 a.m.

Conservative

The Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

We have time for a brief response before we move on to members' statements.

Food and Drugs ActGovernment Orders

10:55 a.m.

NDP

Rosane Doré Lefebvre NDP Alfred-Pellan, QC

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Oakville for his comments. I must say, I am very happy that the bill contains provisions to change the current system.

As I already mentioned, the NDP will vote in favour of Bill C-17, and we look forward to discussing it in committee in order to make some changes that are even more significant. I appreciate the comments from the member for Oakville.

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10:55 a.m.

Conservative

The Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

There will be approximately three minutes left for questions and comments after question period.

Right now we will move on to statements by members.

Charlie YoungStatements By Members

10:55 a.m.

Conservative

Mark Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Charlie Young, a local music and Rotary Club legend, who passed away earlier this month at the age of 94.

Born in the U.K., Charlie joined his first music group at the age of 14, playing the clarinet and saxophone. He continued to perform for the next 80 years, with his last gig at a luncheon at the Rotary Club of Chilliwack just five days before he died.

Charlie joined the World War II effort and brought comfort to Allied troops all over Europe with his music. It was during the war that he met and married his beloved Mary, also a musician. They made beautiful music together.

They moved to Canada in 1955 and soon afterward formed the Copper Room Orchestra, performing at the Harrison Hot Springs hotel. Their award-winning music was the backdrop for many a memorable evening on that dance floor.

Charlie's memorial service was fittingly a musical celebration, with his last band, The Rotations, doing their best to play on even though their heart and soul had passed on.

Forever young, Charlie Young left a lasting legacy. He will be missed.