Health Committee on March 10th, 2026

[Jim Keon]

I'd like to provide an answer to that, and provide some context.

I am the president of the Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association, representing all companies, including Apotex.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'm sorry, Mr. Keon, but I asked Mr. Watson this question. I just want to know whether he can answer that.

[Jim Keon]

I represent Apotex and all generic companies. The—

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Are you representing Mr. Watson? I'm sorry. I didn't realize that. I'm sure you'll have questions going to you.

I am going to ask Mr. Watson, because he is the one who spoke to us about—

[Jim Keon]

I was just going to provide some context.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dan Mazier]

I'm using the chair's prerogative.

The question was for Mr. Watson. If Mr. Watson decides to hand it over to you, that's the way it will work.

[Jeff Watson]

I'm not in a position to talk about part of your question.

I will tell you that we recognize the tragic circumstances that these products have caused for Canadians.

However, as a reminder, as a generic company and part of the generic association, we do not promote generic products to physicians. We don't sell products to physicians or patients. We sell our products to pharmacists through a wholesale chain.

I will defer to Jim because this is an—

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I will follow up with another question.

We know Apotex agreed, under a national multistate opioid settlement in the United States, to a compensation package of $72 million.

I want to understand why your company, Apotex, is willing to compensate Americans but not.... Why won't you end the legal battle here in Canada and compensate British Columbians? It's a very important question, I'm sure, for everybody watching online and in this room today.

[Jeff Watson]

Once again, we recognize the importance of this. We have been working productively, but I'm not in a position to...nor will I be commenting on any ongoing matters.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Further to that, I understand it's a difficult subject, but you've been working on this for seven years. In order for Canadians to trust your company and trust you, we need to understand why they aren't being compensated for the destruction caused by these drugs in British Columbia, which I represent, and throughout Canada.

[Jeff Watson]

Once again, it's an ongoing matter.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Okay.

I have a final question on this.

As CEO of Apotex, do you take any responsibility for the Canadians who lost their lives to, or have been ruined by, opioid addiction?

[Jeff Watson]

As the CEO of Apotex, I take the importance, maintenance and impacts of these drugs extremely seriously. Once again, Apotex, like other generic companies, sells products to pharmacies. We do not promote our products. We fulfill existing demand in the marketplace.

However, we do take this topic extremely seriously.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'm glad to hear that, because I know that you did have a settlement with Quebec. I'm wondering why this company cannot settle with B.C. It's been seven years.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dan Mazier]

Ms. Jaczek, you have five minutes.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you so much, Chair.

To reorient the discussion and remind all our witnesses, the study is to develop recommendations on how Canada can best promote pharmaceutical sovereignty.

To return to that subject, my first question is for Mr. Keon.

Canada is responsible for direct health services for the armed forces and for indigenous populations. Would you recommend that Canada look directly at Canadian manufacturers in terms of procurement for its pharmaceutical requirements for those particular responsibilities?

[Jim Keon]

It absolutely should look to Canadian suppliers. I think the procurement process should also look for reliability, sustainability, good cost and good value. All of those things should be part of the contracts.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Ms. Creighton, would you like to comment on possible procurement practices?

[Terry Creighton]

In fact, procurement policies are one of the five action plans we have put together. We have thought about this a lot. We think there is great opportunity in Canada to support domestic producers through procurement. Between the federal and provincial governments, governments in Canada spend over $18 billion a year reimbursing eligible Canadians under the drug plans.

As it stands today, none of that is directed to support Canadian producers, yet the federal government has adopted, or is in the midst of adopting, a buy Canadian policy, which we certainly support. One of the components of that is to direct federal purchases to Canadian suppliers. We are strongly in favour of that including medicines. Through the programs you mentioned, there is an opportunity through formulary management to direct even a portion of those current expenditures to give preference to Canadian-made medicines.

The most important part of that is it would not cost any additional money because those expenditures are already being made. This would be a matter, in the case of generics, of directing some of that to the companies that are here in Canada, have invested in Canada, are making these medicines in Canada and are incurring the cost to do so as a way to support Canadian producers.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Creighton, I think you made some comments, or expressed concerns, about our government's new initiatives for regulating Health Canada, trying to modernize the whole regulatory process and speed it up, and moving towards greater international collaboration and reliance, including the ability to rely on assessments by foreign regulators while maintaining Canadian standards for safety, effectiveness and quality.

You viewed this with some trepidation. Can you elaborate on how you think this might be improved?

[Terry Creighton]

The reliance program is in the midst of consultation. It is a program that is intended to speed up approvals of submissions to Health Canada for sponsors—drug companies—by relying on the approval they have received from other foreign regulatory authorities, such as the FDA in the U.S. or the European Medicines Agency in Europe. The intention of it is to speed up approvals.

Logically, you have to believe that those applications received by Health Canada will get priority review, because the whole point is to speed it up. We are very concerned that, as Jim pointed out, there are already tremendous delays in approving submissions for generic products from Canadian companies as well, and we're concerned that Canadian submissions will inadvertently go to the end of the line.

We know this is not the intention of the reliance program. It is an unintended consequence that we have brought to Health Canada's attention, but it's very concerning to us if it delays the approval of Canadian products.

In the case of generics, we compete against those imported products, and we're concerned that they would gain access to the Canadian market faster and our products would stay in the same queue that currently exists, which is not being addressed and is not being improved, and that we would be subject to the current pathway as opposed to this expedited pathway.

We have recommended, in addition to the reliance program, that Health Canada consider a priority pathway for submissions from Canadian companies and speed up those approvals in a different way.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dan Mazier]

Thank you, Ms. Creighton.

Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, you have six minutes.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'll continue with Mr. Bouvier.

This year, the federal government also announced a significant cut to the college and community innovation program.

In your opinion, what impact can this lack of predictability in federal programs have on Canada's ability to build a strong pharmaceutical ecosystem?

[Michel Bouvier]

You mentioned a particularly important word, predictability.

One of the major difficulties we've encountered over the years is the inability to know to what extent a program that's been put in place will be supported and maintained for a number of years so that we can establish partnerships, either with other university partners or with industrial partners, to ensure the sustainability of the programs and research we're undertaking. Sustainability is an important issue.

That said, the budget cuts that are being made to training programs, whether at the college or university level, have a major impact on our ability to train the next generation of innovators, both in the pharmaceutical field and in other fields, particularly in the life sciences. We need to train these people here so that they can contribute to the next discoveries and innovations here.

If the climate is not conducive to this training, young people will either choose to leave Canada or choose other career paths, which will jeopardize our ability to innovate in the future.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Bouvier, have you heard from research centres that have had to scale back their activities or even close their doors following the elimination of the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research Program?