Thank you.
Our overall objective as a Canadian generic pharmaceutical industry and as part of the worldwide generic pharmaceutical industry is to increase opportunities for exports. We want to export good quality medicines around the world. Canada has a good reputation on generic medicines. We've been in this business for decades. Health Canada has a high regulatory standard. Canadian-approved generic medicines are wanted and seen as quality medicines around the world.
From time to time now, we're seeing questions about medicines coming from various countries. So one of the things we would like to see in TPP beyond intellectual property and beyond tariffs—and I'll answer the tariff question—would be, in trade negotiations generally, a movement towards trying to lift up regulatory standards and harmonize regulatory standards and reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and do more cooperation in terms of inspections between agencies. It's not possible for Health Canada to go and check agencies around the world. They need to have assurances that those plants we're relying on have quality products. That's an important element.
In terms of tariffs, as I mentioned, generally speaking they're not that high in pharmaceuticals and they're not really a barrier. It is not something that our member companies are particularly concerned about. We do support elimination of tariffs as a general principle. We import products from around the world and we sell around the world. We would like to see the complete elimination of tariffs on pharmaceuticals, but that's not a barrier.
On the intellectual property, again, we're an export industry. About 50% of our domestic production is being exported. We think it is critical that Canadian companies have access to developing products legally on a timely basis so that we're not late to market, because these are truly international markets now and generic pharmaceutical investment will go to those countries where it is legal to manufacture products on a timely basis.