Thank you for the opportunity. I'm here with two other members of the Grandmother's Advocacy Network.
While we're women of a certain age, our concern is with drug costs in Canada, but more importantly, for our purposes, is the impact of the TPP on people in poorer parts of the world.
There are two specific concerns I want to identify very briefly. One, the delay of generic drugs onto the market will have a very deleterious impact. Generics were one of the most important reasons why the price of ARVs for HIV/AIDS went down from $10,000 a year to $150. That's really important.
We know that the Global Fund, to which the Liberal government, our government, has just generously supported, is one of the agencies that is going to be impacted by the price of drugs to poorer countries going up.
The other aspect, and I think this may be a surprising thing for many of us, is that the delay of generics actually can impede the development of innovation. For example, if a generic company wants to develop a paediatric formulation of an HIV drug or if they want to develop a heat-resistant, good for sub-Sahara and Africa, form of the medication, they could be denied the opportunity. This will delay.
The Grandmother's Advocacy Network would agree with agencies like MSF that say the big losers in the TPP are patients and treatment providers in developing countries.
Thank you.