Health committee  The net effect is it delays the generic products from coming on the market, and the impact, of course, is that you have to pay the higher prices for much longer. On some of the large-selling drugs, you're looking at tens of millions of dollars in a Manitoba drug program, and they

Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. The Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association is the national association that represents Canada's generic pharmaceutical industry. Generic drugs are low-cost versions of brand-name drugs. They are produced by a number of manufacturers once the patent

Industry committee  No, it's a fundamental change. In fact, the Supreme Court looked at the patented medicines regulations, which are a function of the Patent Act. The Patent Act has a clause called “early working”. It says that a company can use a patent to develop a product for research and reg

Industry committee  I will answer in English. If a patent represents a substantial improvement, and if it is a new product, then that patent will protect the product and the generic will not be able to come to market until that new patent has expired. What we find with evergreening is that there ar

Industry committee  Our companies have at least 8,000 or 9,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector in Canada, mainly in Ontario and Quebec. We are fighting hard to protect those jobs in Canada.

Industry committee  Yes.

Industry committee  There are rules in the United States regarding patents, and to some extent they're different from those in Canada. But clearly the generics will be genericizing these products as well. The one point I would make is that because of the laws that Canada had 20 years ago, it's thou

Industry committee  In Canada, 50% of prescriptions are for generic medications. In the United States, it is 67% of prescriptions.

Industry committee  When a new product is put on the market, It is difficult to say whether a generic manufacturer is going to produce an equivalent in 12 or 14 years. In Canada, the average exclusivity period for brand-name products is more like 12 to 14 years, not 5 to 9 years as my colleagues hav

Industry committee  I'm not aware of the letter, but I know the Quebec Minister of Industry has been very supportive of both the brand and generic industries. There are strong generic and brand industries in Quebec; I think that's one point to mention. The decision of the Supreme Court reaffirmed t

Industry committee  I'm not sure I understand your question. This change was a complete surprise to us. It's going to allow patents that had previously been determined to be irrelevant to our products to go back on the list and delay us from coming on to the market. It's bad for our industry. We mad

Industry committee  Thank you. For a generic drug, the research would be to develop your own formulation for the drug. You would either develop or import, define chemicals, develop the formulation. You then do your clinical trials to determine that the product has the same medicinal effect as the b

Industry committee  A generic drug by definition is an equivalent product to a brand name product. Our value is in bringing the cost down and increasing the headroom for expenditures to go elsewhere in the health system.

Industry committee  As I said, our volumes have been increasing. We have had significant growth in Canada for the last number of years. So I think in part the fact that governments are willing to put our products on their formularies faster than in the past, they recognize the value better.... So in

Industry committee  Thank you. As I said earlier with regard to the changes that are now published in the Canada Gazette--and the comments have to be in by Monday--there was no consultation. We were completely surprised. I have some difficulty in understanding the rationale. Pharmaceuticals have e