Evidence of meeting #55 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 drugs.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President, Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (Rx&D)
Personally, I went and met with a group of 25 African ambassadors to talk about this legislation. I wasn't blaming anybody, please, and I don't think you really were meaning to say that I was.
NDP
President, Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (Rx&D)
No, my position is not that it's their fault. My position is they didn't know about it. They weren't informed about it.
So to your question, one of the things we did is we went out and started talking to them. We have now been communicating to them. It's not up to us to tell all the details of it, but we did our best. We made sure of all the links to get interest, so this actually would be used. It seems to me that's one thing that we could do. We could do other things, and I'm recommending that we should get much more engaged to make sure that everybody knows about the very steps of the law. It's not that complicated. Frankly, when we are trying to save lives, it seems a very basic question of saying that if we're going to move product to this country, we should know which country it's going to. I think that's a pretty legitimate, basic kind of question that we should be asking.
If we can get those four questions answered, let's start moving on that. We've been trying to encourage that. I agree with you. We did our best, as an association, to start informing those countries, and we'll continue to do that.
Conservative
President and Chief Executive Officer, Apotex Inc.; Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association
I have no comment. It's just too frustrating. They're saying that they're making it easy, go, you have to answer these four questions. But if in fact an organization with the reputation of MSF comes to us and says “We have this country that wants to buy the product, and the price you're prepared to buy at is competitive with the Indian companies, but the difficulty is that the country does not want to identify that it needs a handout from Canada”, it's just frustrating.
President, Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association
The other reason why countries don't want to self-identify is they become a lightning rod for political attention and negative attention from the brand-name pharmaceutical industry.
Recently in Thailand, with a drug called Aluvia, an anti-AIDS medicine, the Thai government said it was going to issue a compulsory licence to import the product from India. Abbott, the owner of that patented product, threatened to pull seven other products off the market and put tremendous pressure on that country. Eventually, because of pressure from a lot of the NGOs and political pressure, Abbott backed off and is now making the product available at lower prices. However, without an effective functioning compulsory licensing system and without the threat of generic competition and lower prices, that would never happen.
Countries don't want to self-identify because right now they don't see an effective regime, and it's very difficult for them.
Senior Vice-President and General Counsel, Gilead Sciences Inc.
Thank you.
To answer your question, honestly, we've never gone to a developing world country and said, “Why don't you go use CAMR?” But I would say every day of every week we have Gilead people who are in the developing world, whether this be Africa, Latin America, or Southeast Asia, working with ministries of health, talking about how we can meet the needs of their AIDS programs and how we can work to get our products to their patients. So I can specifically say we've met with Thailand in the last couple of weeks. We have people in South Africa today. I'll be going to India next week, meeting with the government there. We have in all cases been able to work out arrangements where they can access our drugs and get the drugs to the patients they feel need to have our drugs, second-line therapies at affordable prices.
Specific to Thailand, we've had a very good relationship with the new government in Thailand. They are very comfortable with Gilead. We've met with them. We've met with their GPO, a generic company there, and their decision was that they're happy accessing the drug from us.
In my mind, if--
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Rajotte
I'm sorry, we're way over time, Mr. Alton. I'm sorry about that. We have to continue. Mr. Masse will have another turn shortly.
Mr. Brison.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all of you.
We have what is a multinational challenge in Africa in terms of addressing the crisis and spanning both a range of national governments and the NGO community. Canada, Denmark, Sweden, and I believe France as well have legislation that is similar, but they have had failures in terms of delivery. There have been some success stories and the Clinton Foundation is in fact distributing HIV drugs successfully.
Have your companies approached the Clinton Foundation, for instance, to work with them, an NGO that is actually having some success in making this happen?
Senior Vice-President and General Counsel, Gilead Sciences Inc.
The answer is yes, we're in constant dialogue with the Clinton Foundation. They recently put out an RFP for purchase of our product and a variety of other products, and we are putting in a bid on that as well as the Indian companies we work with.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
So there is some success in terms of that, but from the generics and also the--
President, Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association
We've had several discussions with the Clinton Foundation and, as Jack has said, Doctors Without Borders, identifying the patented products that might be of interest to them.
With respect to the non-patented products, as Jack mentioned earlier, he's now shipping to over 100 countries products that are off patent, but for the patented products, yes, we've had discussions with them.
I can tell you right now that in many ways what we need is some success with this legislation so that people can see that it actually works. We haven't had that yet, so they've lost a little bit of interest in the Canadian legislation.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
Mr. Keon, you mentioned the off-patent products. As we know, tuberculosis and malaria remain massive challenges in Africa. The drugs to treat those have by and large been off patent for years.
Mr. Kay, does your company have a program to ship drugs to Africa for TB and malaria?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Apotex Inc.; Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association
In our current product line, we do not have any agents for the treatment of tuberculosis or malaria. We've never developed generic equivalents because there wasn't a demand in our major market, which is Canada.
President, Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association
I think where you find the generic companies developing those products are mainly in the developing world, where they have more access, unfortunately, to the illnesses and more ability to carry out the clinical trials, etc.
It's simply not that practical here to carry out clinical trials on a number of those products.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
But you developed a drug specifically around MSF's specifications for combating HIV in Africa.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Apotex Inc.; Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association
That is correct. We did.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
The Bush administration recently announced a multi-billion-dollar initiative on HIV in Africa. Given that western governments need to cooperate more closely to address this, and given that some of you represent multinational corporations, are your affiliates in the U.S.--or your parents, in some cases--working with governments in other countries to address this, to try to make this work?
Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Eli Lilly Canada Inc.; Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (Rx&D)
We are working with all of the major funding bodies that are involved with the procurement of drugs. Some of that work on our side, as I mentioned earlier, is through technology transfer. There are a number of AIDS companies that have transferred technology to generic drugs in both India and in Africa.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
The challenge we have is that we're seized with trying to figure out what the real problem is. Some of you are saying that the legislation isn't the real problem. Some of you are saying the governments of potential recipient countries are part of the problem. I don't buy any of this completely, but I don't reject any of it completely.
It's really going to take goodwill in terms of addressing this. When was the last time you guys--and I'm talking about the generics and the R-and-D-based pharmaceutical industries--actually met, outside of coming to a parliamentary committee, to talk about how you are going to make this work?
Liberal
Dan McTeague Liberal Pickering—Scarborough East, ON
The last time the Liberals and Conservatives did the same.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
But we're supposed to be partisan.
No, but have you had meetings, outside of coming to a parliamentary committee, on how you're going to take an existing piece of legislation and make this work?
President, Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association
You had two questions. The first was about dealing with the Bush administration and others. Again, this legislation has nothing to do with generic companies providing medicines abroad that are not covered by patent. This legislation has nothing to do with brand-name companies providing their products, whether it's philanthropically or for sale, abroad. They can do that now.
This legislation is intended to allow generic companies to access patented medicines. I think we should stay focused on that. It's all very good that we have donation programs and the brands have donation programs. It has nothing to do with this legislation.
And as far as talking to the brand-name companies is concerned, I would say that their intention here is to ensure that the legislation protects the interests of brand-name companies, and it's not to ensure that generic companies are able to make copies of their patented products and ship them abroad.
So we have not had discussions with them.
