Evidence of meeting #53 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was health.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
Okay. Very quickly, did I hear correctly that generic companies are allowed to charge 25% above the cost? Did I catch that right?
Director, Patent Policy, Department of Industry
No. There's a provision in the Patent Act that allows the patent holder to challenge the generic's export licence if they're charging 25% or more to the importing country, the developing country--25% or more of the price of the equivalent brand name drug in Canada.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
So that's 25%, and they get a royalty of up to 4% as well. I caught that, too, I think.
Director, Patent Policy, Department of Industry
Well, it varies between, as I said, 0.02% and about 3.8%. It would depend on the development status of the country you're exporting the drug to.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This past Sunday I had a chance to be with my community to participate in ceremonies to remember the 13th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide. Part of that genocide, in its darkest chapter, was the fact that we all stood by and didn't do anything. Also, in Rwanda now, we have an explosion of AIDS and a number of different diseases because of what happened there. They're infected quite seriously with it now.
This seems to be happening as well with a number of nations now. We have legislation. It's always helpful to see where you're going or where you want to go by revisiting where you started from. Where we started from, it was quite clear that we wanted to be the role model, to set the example for other nations, to institute legislation that actually would produce drugs that could go to developing nations across the planet, not just Africa, for tuberculosis, malaria, a series of different diseases.
Now we've run into these problems on our side, being the forebears of this. Have there been discussions between your different departments or the ministers with our other sister nations who are once again in this situation, where our legislation, whatever intent it might have had, is not producing the real results tangibly for individuals who are affected by these diseases and the countries that we were professing to be able to support...coming from the original nation request to WTO to actually do this in first place? That's where it started from. Has there been that discussion among our colleagues who have actually presented legislation or crafted legislation that doesn't work for all of us combined together?
Director, Intellectual Property, Information and Technology Trade Policy Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
I think it has been mentioned that we have been talking with other nations who've implemented it, to find out what's happening in their system and whether they've been having any success. As of yesterday, when I checked the website, there were no notifications from any developing country. We've been discussing this in Geneva, but there are a number of factors, and I think most of them are outside the WTO.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
So none of the ministers or none of your departments pick up the phone and say to whatever country—the Netherlands was the first, beforehand, having granted it through their king, I believe, at that time—“Okay, listen, this is the problem we're running into here. This is what the NGOs are telling us, this is what the generics are telling us, this is what the drug companies are telling us. We're not going anywhere. We're stuck.”
Does that type of behaviour happen, or is it basically that we just go around to different seminars and talk about our legislation and have similar problems but don't actually start to look at what we can do for a joint solution?
Director, Office of Patented Medicines and Liaison, Therapeutic Products Directorate, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health
We do have encounters with fellow regulators. We are trying to understand how to make this work. To be fair, most of the people I've met involved in this kind of legislation or a health ministry in another area are trying to make it work. I've seen a lot of smart people in the room--a lot of them medically trained, and so on--but it's complicated to take patents and put them together with drugs. To make sure our discussions become productive, I've certainly been in many encounters where we've tried to get down into that. I'm sure there is will. As I mentioned, my minister has been talking to colleagues. So there's an attempt to try to find that, but not as a broad, systemic study.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
You're absolutely correct, Mr. Lee. I think that's where it takes political will to do it, at the end of the day. I've always believed that this legislation was built so it won't actually be applicable and achieve results. There is so much bias, in terms of not getting an end result, that it's stuck here.
What is happening in your particular case? You actually have the process completed to the point where people can access it if they want. Is it because there are no timelines in negotiations between generics and pharmaceuticals on the price of it? Is that the holdup? What has been the feedback at this point from your cases on why it's not going to the next level?
Director, Office of Patented Medicines and Liaison, Therapeutic Products Directorate, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health
When you canvass other witnesses about that, it may be more productive for you, because we're not actually part of the negotiations that go on to that next step. I can certainly describe for you--and have to some small extent--the fact that we've received applications. We've sat down together with our colleagues in the commissioner's office and explained to the company how it all works and what each step involves. But the next step is the exchange between the generics and the brands in the country. We're not involved in that discussion.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
So essentially it just sits on the shelf at Health Canada until it's actually triggered to be released.
Director, Office of Patented Medicines and Liaison, Therapeutic Products Directorate, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health
Yes. We have it on our patent hold.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I know there are some people who have been here through this process, but I find it particularly troubling that we don't seem to be taking leadership. I'm certainly not blaming individuals in front of us here. I understand how things work, but it would seem that we were supposed to be taking political leadership of this three years ago--four years ago, in fact, because it took another year to actually get going. But I would have liked to have seen the same thing happen bureaucratically amongst your colleagues in other countries who have similar jurisdictional responsibilities.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Rajotte
That will have to stand as a statement, which I think it probably was.
We'll go now to Mr. Byrne.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
Thank you very much.
Will the global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, to which the Government of Canada just announced a $250 million contribution, provide drugs for those diseases in those epidemics, and how so?
Team Leader, HIV-AIDS, Canadian International Development Agency
Absolutely. The global fund is a funding mechanism to which countries and civil society organizations can apply.
Just to speak specifically to the issue of medicines, with the current state of funding within the global fund it's projected that through that funding about 1.8 million people will receive antiretroviral treatment for AIDS and about 3 million people will receive treatment for tuberculosis.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
How will it provide those drugs? Will it be done through the WTO's TRIPS waivers or through some other mechanism?
Team Leader, HIV-AIDS, Canadian International Development Agency
The global fund does get involved to some degree in procurement. That's a bit of an issue, but it's more—
Team Leader, HIV-AIDS, Canadian International Development Agency
It provides the funding to developing countries to be able to purchase the medicines. That's probably the best way of describing it. Then it's up to the countries--with funding they get from the global fund and other donors like Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and put in through their own budgets--to make decisions about how they can best access the most affordable and effective medicines they have put within their plans to provide to their populations.
CAMR is intended to provide them with another option through which they can access medicines. The intention of the WTO decision was for Canada and other WTO members to enable them to access medicines through compulsory licensing. If they decide that is the best means through which they can purchase the medicines to address the public health needs in their countries, that's the way they would undertake to do it.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
So here's what we know. We know that roadblocks were eliminated in providing cheap access to medicines, but that didn't actually facilitate an efficient way of getting the drugs into the medical facilities that treat the one million children, the people who die of malaria every year, and the three million who die of HIV/AIDS every year.
On the normal modus operandi of CIDA in supplying most aid to developing countries, take, for example, the provision of food aid. CIDA normally goes out, solicits proposals, and contracts with Canadian food suppliers to package and transport goods. A cheque for that mackerel, herring, or grain is cut by CIDA and given to the Canadian supplier of the food aid.
It seems really strange to me that we've identified all of the background as to why this program is not working--the capacity within the importing country, in the developing country; formulating contracts; and getting through Canadian legislative and regulatory hurdles. But I'm puzzled as to why Canada has not taken the position that we would become a direct first-party provider of these services using the WTO TRIPS waivers, Canada's access to medicines regime, and our own statutory powers. Why doesn't CIDA simply go in, solicit an importing country that has identified an epidemic, and provide the championship on the ground in the host country's own health facilities, and on the ground here in Ottawa, in getting this process through? It seems highly consistent.
Is there any contemplation at CIDA to actually conduct one or ten pilot projects to see if the model I've presented to you works? It seems to be the model CIDA has used for every other international development project it has ever embarked upon.