International Trade Committee on June 7th, 2016

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Ms. Sanjuan may know.

[Judit Rius Sanjuan]

Around 96% of the products we currently use to treat the three diseases of HIV, TB, and malaria are generics. That gives you an idea of the impact of generics in our medical operations: 96%. It's similar numbers—

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

You're saying only 4% would be affected?

[Judit Rius Sanjuan]

Yes.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

What percentage would that be of your overall costs? What percentage, 1%?

[Judit Rius Sanjuan]

No, no, I'm not saying that. My apologies for the confusion. I'm saying that we, as well as the Global Fund and ministers of health around the world, are highly dependent on the continual availability of the generic competition that has brought the prices down, including for one disease by—

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

I'm sorry. Maybe you misunderstand my question.

Ms. Sanjuan, I'm trying to find out how your costs are affected by IP-protected products and services today. What is that makeup of your costs?

[Judit Rius Sanjuan]

It means that if the TPP gets in place in current form, we would be negatively impacted, because we would have to spend more on pharmaceuticals and have less capacity to have access to affordable generics. That will have an impact on human life and costs.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

I understand that.

We had a witness, Barry Sookman, at our committee in May of this year. He's a trade lawyer. He said that other countries, such as those in Europe, have more robust patent protection and yet their prices are lower than Canada's. So there isn't a one-to-one relationship between the entry into force of free trade agreements and increases in drug prices.

Can you tell me if what he said is accurate, and if so, why are drug prices higher in Canada than other jurisdictions where drug manufacturers have a longer period of IP protection?

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

They will have to be very quick answers.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Mr. Nickerson would have an idea on this.

[Jason Nickerson]

I'm not entirely familiar with the context of the statement. I'd prefer to provide a written answer.

In our experience, we do see that correlation between stronger intellectual property provisions and higher drug prices. It stands to reason that as you have only one manufacturer on the market, which is able to retain higher prices and no competition, the prices are going to remain high. In our experience, stronger IP protections do result in higher prices.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, sir.

We're going to move to the last questioner from the NDP.

Go ahead, Ms. Ramsey, for three and a half minutes.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

I just want to add to something that Mr. Perrault said.

You mentioned three things, or three of your perspectives, when you're looking at the TPP. I want to add a fourth, and that's people in communities and the health and well-being of Canadians.

My question is for Ms. Dey. The Council of Canadians has been doing a lot of work to educate Canadians on TPP in particular, but on other trade deals as well. We've heard from Canadians. We've had open sessions in our last travel period. We had 60 people come forward, largely against the TPP. Their concerns centred around ISDS and the increased costs of drugs for Canadians.

I wonder if you can speak to us a bit about your efforts with Canadians and whether or not you feel they're being consulted fully.

[Sujata Dey]

Right.

We've actually had a lot of our people—we have members all over the country—who have been quite disappointed to this point with the consultation process, particularly with the minister. Your initial consultations were meeting with stakeholders, and these were called open consultations, but we were often receiving press releases to show up at them just 24 hours before they were held.

This committee has done a better process of consultation, in the sense that we have a variety of opinions here and you are actually going across the country. We applaud you on that. However, to the same point, they are not very well advertised. Often there are people who have frustrations because they're not necessarily getting a chance to speak. Also, we think that a consultation process isn't just about releasing a 6,000-page document and saying, “Okay, here you go. Analyze it as you wish.” In other countries, for example in Australia, they have a productivity commissioner who has actually done an analysis.

When I talk about analysis, I mean independent analysis, not analysis that's going to try to promote the agreement. It's to give Canadians the pros, the cons, and to let them have the information to decide. Also, for us, it's very important that the government has made commitments to first nations people. They're often on the front lines of resources. They could also be in situations where ISDS cases would affect them. For example, Malaysia has a company called Petronas on Lelu Island. A comprehensive consultation is also breaking it down, making sure that you do not have just the economic interests considered, but also how it affects human rights, how it affects broader society, and then having the kind of consultation that people can go with.

We're stuck in a situation where we negotiated an agreement during the last federal election without even all of the parliamentarians around the table. I think there is a great opportunity to address that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you.

That wraps up today. I'd really like to thank the panellists for taking their time to come here. We had a very good, informative, lively dialogue, and it was good to see you here. Thank you very much.

We're going to break now and go in camera in five minutes, so I'd ask everybody but the MPs to leave the room.

Thank you very much.

[Proceedings continue in camera]