I'll be quick as I can. Thank you.
Canada’s balance of payments in pharmaceuticals has also deteriorated. In 1987 under compulsory licensing, we had a trade deficit of $334 million. In 2012 our trade deficit had ballooned to $7.6 billion. Once our Patent Act changes were locked in by NAFTA and TRIPS, the multinational drug corporations had little reason and no obligation to locate production, employment, and research and development in Canada.
In light of the extensive evidence of this policy failure, it's not clear how further extensions of patent protection for pharmaceuticals will benefit Canada.
I'm going to jump down the page a little in light of your comments.
What Canada should demand is a clear commitment by all TPP parties to the Doha “Declaration on the TRIPS agreement and public health”, including “the right of WTO Members to make full use of the safeguard provisions of the TRIPS Agreement in order to protect public health and enhance access to medicines for poor countries”.
We should also oppose any proposals that would undermine existing protections for health in TRIPS.
The TPP proposes additional protection for trademarks, an area that's already witnessed numerous health-related trade disputes.
According to the World Health Organization, tobacco kills almost six million people annually. Over 168 countries have signed the 2005 WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, but not the U.S. This treaty advocates numerous regulatory measures to restrict tobacco marketing and promotion, but the multinational tobacco industry has opposed these measures, launching numerous trade challenges to strike down public health measures designed to reduce tobacco consumption.
Canada should be particularly concerned about this. In 1994 we drafted new legislation that required manufacturers to sell cigarettes in plain packaging, based on evidence from the public health community that industry advertising linked logos and images on cigarette packages with attractive lifestyles and thus encouraged smoking. Despite the health rationale, Canada abandoned plain packaging, fearing it would lose a NAFTA trade challenge from U.S. tobacco interests. These fears were based in part on the testimony of Carla Hills, who was the U.S. negotiator representing R J. Reynolds.
We don't know how many Canadians might have stopped smoking had this legislation passed.
Other labelling requirements are also at risk. We see that Philip Morris has initiated arbitration to stop Uruguay from placing graphic images of smoking victims on its cigarette packages. There are several others that I cite in my paper.
Canada must also ensure in terms of technical barriers to trade that the provisions in the TPP be no more extensive than those in the current WTO TBT. This means that we need to have the right to an explicit guarantee for the right of governments to require health warning labels on all such products.
Another area is alcohol, which has numerous health and social problems. The WHO estimates that 2.5 million people die each year from its harmful impacts. The liberalization of alcohol markets and the elimination of restrictions on alcohol promotion have serious health consequences. In 2010, the UN’s World Health Assembly adopted the global strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol. However, TPP commitments to regulatory harmonization and easier market access may pose significant barriers to achieving this goal.
Food safety is another—