Industry committee  Bill C-8 does not include in-transit goods as part of the “in scope” activities the Canadian Border Services Agency would be looking at. We think this is appropriate; we're not in favour of expanding those powers beyond the scope of the current bill. Pharmaceuticals trade around the world.

Industry committee  Yes. Thank you very much. I agree with your point that similar size, shape, and colour of generic medicines—similar trade dress—is important for patients, particularly seniors, who often are taking many medications. If they are switched from one manufacturer to another, it's much easier to maintain their regimen if the product looks the same.

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee. On behalf of the Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association, let me say that we appreciate the opportunity for Canada's generic pharmaceutical industry to contribute to your study. The bill is largely focused on the important objective of combatting counterfeit products.

Industry committee  Yes, we would be pleased to do that. We'll follow up and send the recommendations.

Industry committee  I think we made most of our points in our opening remarks or in answering questions. I would like to ask the committee to focus on the suggestions we have for looking at the patented medicine notice of compliance regulations. They are unique to pharmaceuticals. They block a generic from getting approval at Health Canada until it litigates patents.

Industry committee  The prices in Canada have come down dramatically over the last five years. We are a regulated market at the provincial level. I'll use Ontario as an example since it's the largest. It used to regulate generics effectively at 63% of the brand name price. That was until 2008. In Ontario now, if you want to be listed on their formulary, you can price your product effectively at 25% or you won't get on.

Industry committee  If the medication is new, novel, useful, an improvement, we would support the patenting of it.

Industry committee  I think they're both in the same therapeutic class. What we found was the sales of Lipitor decreased dramatically and the sales of Crestor increased dramatically after Lipitor went off patent, indicating that there was something happening in the marketplace beyond an improvement in the therapeutic applicability of either product.

Industry committee  They're not exact replicas, but they are both in the same therapeutic class.

Industry committee  They're substantially the same. They treat the same illnesses, yes.

Industry committee  They're both statin products.

Industry committee  I'm not sure I made that specific point, but there is some overlap. One of our member companies, Sandoz, is part of the Novartis family, which is a brand name pharmaceutical company. Some of our companies have arms that also do research into new products, so there is some overlap between the two sectors.

Industry committee  When patents expire and generics come on the market, I think you would find that in virtually all pharmacies in Canada, the generic would be available to the patient. I will use an example in the area of cholesterol. A drug called Lipitor came off patent and instead of generic prescriptions for Lipitor increasing as you might expect as the prices came down, the promotion to the medical community was for a different drug, Crestor, and sales of Crestor went up.

Industry committee  I can start. Before I do, there has been a slight implication that Canada is free-riding in the pharmaceutical sector. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have a very strong patent regime, a very strong data exclusivity regime. We provide eight years of data protection in Canada, far more than they do in the United States.

Industry committee  The first thing I would say is that we are a trading industry. We absolutely depend on trade. We want free trade. We support free trade. Some of the proposals on the table on pharmaceutical IP are going to restrict trade and restrict our access to foreign markets that are absolutely critical for our companies to continue to invest here.