International Trade Committee on Nov. 29th, 2016

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

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank our excellent witnesses. It's been just tremendous to see the diversity we have and the knowledge all of you bring, be it in ICT, agriculture, generics, or pharmaceuticals. It's good to know that many of you have been around for many, many years, so you have that knowledge and you've been at the table. I know many of you worked closely with your provincial counterparts who were leading the charge on CETA.

My first question is going to Jim and Jody.

I know you worked with the Province of Ontario, in which you do a lot of your manufacturing, to get some of the wins we needed in this very comprehensive agreement with the generic sector. I know that in Europe they kept pushing for 25 years. Helping the minister and the different levels of government at the table, you were able to negotiate that down to 20 years. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

[Jim Keon]

That is true. The Europeans were pushing for a five-year extension, which would have been a 25-year patent. The CETA negotiators managed to mitigate that, to reduce it to a two-year extension. That's what the bill says, and we believe it should be no longer than that.

As for the Ontario government, our sector has many of its jobs in Ontario. I think, from the Ontario perspective, it wants access to low-cost generics on a timely basis. It is also supportive of our sector and the high-tech jobs we have. We have enjoyed support from the Ontario government in ensuring that the excessive demands from Europe were not always accepted during the negotiations.

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

I think you've mentioned already that the generics are exempt for export.

[Jim Keon]

That's correct.

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

Do you see opportunities there in terms of your export opportunities?

[Jim Keon]

Well, that's just maintaining what we can already do, because right now, after 20-year patents expire, we can manufacture, so we can export. This means that during that two-year period, we can manufacture for export.

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

I'm going to ask you one more question—and I see this as an opportunity or a benefit that does come from CETA. Is it correct that with multiple patents that are now on a specific drug, you cannot be taken to court multiple times? Can it be done only once? Can you tell us a bit about that?

[Jim Keon]

That's a very good question. That is a really critical aspect of what we're hoping will happen as a result of CETA. That, as I mentioned earlier, is going to occur with regulatory changes that come under this patent-medicine notice-of-compliance regime. These regulations are incredibly powerful. They determine all of the infringement actions and the process. If you follow the pharmaceutical industry, you'll see that every new generic comes on the market after extensive litigation.

One of the concerns we've expressed with this bill is that we don't know what's in the regulations yet. In terms of the changes you're talking about to simplify the system, we have called for those. We've had some indication that the regulations are going to do that, but we haven't seen those regulations.

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

Thank you.

I know the time is short, but this is to Ms. Citeau.

I saw that in 2016 Italy was the fifth-largest export destination for Canadian cereals, but there were no other European countries in those top 15 destinations. Why Italy? Do we have opportunities with some of the other European countries in terms of increasing our cereal exports?

[Claire Citeau]

We're sending a lot of wheat to the Italians for them to make their pasta.

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

They love their pasta.

[Claire Citeau]

Some other key exporting countries are France, the U.K., and the Netherlands.

Also, at times, depending on the sector, it's difficult to track where the commodities and the products are going, because there's a lot of intra-EU trade. But Italy certainly is one of the top.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you. That was a good question there, coming at the end, Mr. Fonseca.

That's it for questions from the MPs. I'd like to thank the witnesses for joining us today and for having the patience to wait for us to vote. It was a very good dialogue with a broad spectrum of different industries.

Thank you for coming. Have a good Christmas.

Now, we're only going to suspend for just a minute. I'd ask the MPs not to leave, because we have 10 minutes of business. When the witnesses vacate the room, we'll get going.

[Proceedings continue in camera]