Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure today that I rise to speak to this important legislation.
When applied to drug development and production, the whole notion of intellectual property protection becomes a very divisive issue that in many ways pits the right to patent protection and commercial opportunities for Canadians and Canadian pharmaceutical companies against the need for cost effective access to these technologies.
It is important to recognize that without investment in research and development there would never be a debate on how best to enable important pharmaceutical developments to reach people.
Whatever public policy we put forward regarding intellectual property, patent protection and commercialization, we must be careful not to reduce incentives to the point where we stifle the development of leading edge drugs and treatments that ultimately benefit all Canadians. At some point these technologies and pharmaceuticals become commodities and the generic industry plays a role in that as it occurs.
This piece of legislation, like so many others passed by the Liberals, identifies and in some ways exemplifies the hypocrisy that pervades the government. The government says the WTO ruling has no significant or sustained impact on drug costs. It says the impact of the ruling over the eight year horizon is equivalent to less than 1% of pharmaceutical sales in a single year. It says Canadians will continue to have access to affordable drugs at prices below those of the U.S.
These arguments sound eerily similar to those presented by the Conservative government in the early 1990s, arguments which were rejected by the opposition Liberals. The current Minister of Industry and self-promotion was the Liberal opposition's key spokesperson against using patent and intellectual property protection as a vehicle for promoting a more successful Canadian pharmaceutical industry and greater economic growth.
This is a 180° shift in the position of the Liberals. It is completely consistent with their inconsistency on free trade, the GST and others issues. I will quote the colourful language used at that time by the current Minister of Industry and self-promotion. In the early 1990s he said:
The citizens will need more than generic drugs to recover from the festering wounds which are about to be inflicted on the exposed ankles of Canada's poorest citizens when the Minister sinks his teeth in, past the bone, into the marrow and sucks the lifeblood out of Canada's poorest citizens with Bill C-22.
That was the statement of the then Liberal opposition member who is now the Minister of Industry and self-promotion. Was he referring to the minister at the time or to himself? Could he look into the future and see that he would become a minister and eagerly embrace the policies he vociferously opposed in opposition?
The Minister of Industry has stated on several occasions, and most recently at an economic conference in Davos, that he was wrong about the policies he espoused and opposed while in opposition and that the Conservative Party had been right. Perhaps through action he is now making the same admission.
It is in some ways annoying and upsetting for Conservatives to see Liberals embrace policies they had opposed in opposition and then take credit for the results. However we would prefer that they steal Conservative policies and take credit for the results than implement their own policies, which could in the long term have a far more negative impact on the country.
While it is important to point out their hypocrisy on these issues it is also important to credit them with extraordinary intellectual flexibility. They are at least intelligent enough to swallow themselves whole and recognize that some policies introduced by the previous government have made their lives a heck of a lot easier.
Woody Allen once said that 80% of life is just showing up. For seven years the government has done just that but for probably closer to 90%. For the Prime Minister it is probably 95%. I am not talking about golf; I am talking about governing.
We must walk a fine line. We must provide enough patent protection to allow the pharmaceutical industry and the emerging biotech industry to grow and prosper and develop new technologies which have such potential for the future of humankind. However we must also ensure that new medicines and pharmaceuticals reach the public in the most cost effective and timely way. It is a difficult balance to maintain.
Our current patent protection in Canada by and large strikes a reasonable balance. Our policy is not working badly and has created economic growth in the leading edge, knowledge based industries of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. That being the case, we should be looking at ways to create a more effective balance between the two policy priorities.
The Economist magazine about three years ago published a study conducted in the U.K. about a policy which could balance the need for patent protection with the importance of getting pharmaceuticals into the hands of those who need them in the most cost effective way.
It involved an auctioning process whereby when pharmaceutical companies announced new drugs or medical treatments governments would have an opportunity to bid on them. Governments would of course pay a significant price for the privilege by recognizing the public good of making pharmaceuticals more widely available. They would then make them available to the generics in order to provide lower cost access to the consumer.
We should at least consider doing it that way or investigate the matter as part of the debate in order to balance patent protection and economic opportunities for pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies while making these new pharmaceuticals available more expeditiously to the public. We should be engaging in a debate that would find ways to bring these two divergent interests together in a more realistic way.
The other aspect we have to consider is the emergence of Canada's biotechnology sector. Around the world biotechnology is one of the key components of information technology within the knowledge based industries, which are becoming so important to our global competitiveness.
Canada has demonstrated some significant strengths on the biotech side which capitalizes on our post-secondary university infrastructure. In Nova Scotia we have 11 degree granting institutions. Those universities, which were at one point seen as a cost, are now in a knowledge based economy and seen as an asset.
If members looked at the symbiotic relationship between the small biotech companies and the big pharmaceutical companies, they would recognize that this is not simply an argument about big business and big pharmaceutical companies versus consumers. The notion that only the big pharmaceutical companies benefit from patent protection is a specious argument.
If we were to reduce patent protection and take an aggressive approach that would reduce the incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs and treatments, we would be significantly hurting the biotech companies. They are, by and large, small companies and involve our post-secondary institutions across the country. We must be very careful not to do something from a political perspective that would have a negative impact on Canada's competitiveness in biotechnology.
We must also consider a second argument. How do we get new drugs or pharmaceuticals into the hands of Canadians faster? If we cannot ensure an environment within which those new technologies can be developed in the first place, the second discussion is a moot one. It would be a terrible step backward for the government to reduce, in any way, shape or form, the incentives we have in place to encourage the leading edge development of new pharmaceuticals and new advancements in biotechnology.
Some provinces have been more successful than others in terms of creating a critical mass of activities in these areas. This is one of the areas where significant growth can be achieved in the future both on the biotech side and in pharmaceuticals. We must focus on our medical schools and our undergraduate programs in terms of science and research.
I am pleased to see that the government has in fact recognized the error of its ways in the past. It has embraced and continues to support and foster Progressive Conservative policies with the introduction of this legislation.
I hope we will have an opportunity in the future to discuss some of the other alternatives that could balance more effectively the needs of consumers and patients. It is important to create a greater level of commercialization, intellectual property protection and opportunities in Canada.
The government has not been as creative as it might have been in studying more carefully some of the alternatives that are available in terms of moving forward in a more innovative way in that regard.