International Trade committee  Okay, and thank you. Well, it's not a carve-out in a legal sense. It's an exclusion, and it's a voluntary exclusion. If the TPP is ratified and enters into force, countries can voluntarily exclude all of their tobacco control measures from an investor-state dispute. That's written into the ISDS, so they can do that voluntarily.

International Trade committee  I will have to leave that to other people to try to answer. Looking at the pharmaceutical industry is not the major focus of the research work that I undertake. However, I would point out a few things around the issues that have been discussed around intellectual property rights and pharmaceuticals.

International Trade committee  You got that partly right. It was fully in force by 2023 under the CETA provisions. Those are not my figures. Those are the figures Dr. Joel Lexchin and his colleagues came up with when they did a cost estimating future under the provisions of the CETA.

International Trade committee  There was one figure we had in one of our presentations, which I don't have in front of me, so I don't have the data before me. It showed that over a period of time the price per pharmaceuticals for the patented or brand-name pharmaceuticals has risen, while the price for generics has fallen.

International Trade committee  It will change if CETA is ratified, and the TPP will lock in those provisions and probably add one or two additional ones, which may make it a bit more difficult.

International Trade committee  Yes. The comments that were made earlier that the TPP doesn't substantially change what Canada's commitments are is largely correct, because the TPP commitments around patents very much follow on from what Canada has already agreed to under CETA.

International Trade committee  Sure. Generally speaking, we don't believe there is sufficient protection for public health regulation now and into the future existing within the TPP, and neither do we find any evidence of some of the health-enhancing or health-promoting opportunities related to economic growth, jobs, or employment.

International Trade committee  Yes, I can, thanks, very clearly.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much and thanks for the opportunity to address you from the rather lovely city of Trondheim, Norway. I direct the globalization and health equity research unit at the University of Ottawa. We recently completed a two-year health impact assessment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.