Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this important debate today on Bill S-17. I listened carefully to the member for St. John's West who just spoke on behalf of the Conservative Party.
It is important for people who are listening at home, as well as members in the Chamber, to know that we are talking about part of a bill which would extend patent protection from 17 years to 20 years. It is not a question of a company coming up with a new discovery for AIDS, for example, and the next day a knock-off of the drug is put on the market by a company that specializes in generic drugs.
We were talking of 17 years worth of patent protection. Now the WTO has come along and said that Canada is not in compliance with that. Therefore, in order to comply with the WTO, we have to add another three years to make it a full 20 year patent protection act.
I listened to the Minister of Industry say that this would only involve about 30 patents, but he neglected to say those were worth an estimated $200 million that will be absorbed by Canadian consumers as they purchase higher priced drugs.
The WTO found Canada not to be in compliance with the idea that a generic drug company could manufacture and stockpile drugs so that on the day the patent protection ended they could have their products on the market and ready to go. This too has been termed illegal by the WTO and is dealt with in the bill. We are rushing against the clock to come up with a bill by August 12 of this year to comply with yet another adverse ruling by the World Trade Organization against the Government of Canada.
In 1987 a number of significant changes were made to the Patent Act. Five years were added in 1992 when the infamous Bill C-91 passed in the House of Commons. A number of concerns were expressed at that time by provincial governments about the impact Bill C-91 would have on prescription drug prices.
Shortly after that bill became law I had the privilege of working in the department of health in the province of Saskatchewan, the province which pioneered prescription drug cost and benefits for its people. The government at the time felt that it had no alternative except essentially to gut that legislation as a result of the changes brought about by Bill C-91.
We have seen the costs of prescription drugs increase by several hundred percentage points over the last number of years. They have increased to the point that now, as the member for Burnaby—Douglas noted in his remarks, it is the single biggest expense on a line item as to what any province pays for its medicare system. It is far more than doctors, far more than the cost of hospitals. Prescription drugs now top the list.
That was not the way that it used to be, but that was then and now is now. Some members have done some serious somersaults on this issue over the past 10 years. I will get into that in a few minutes.
Predictions are that prescription drug prices will soar even higher under trade pacts like the one being negotiated now and scheduled to come into effect in 2005.
From heart drugs to chemotherapy, essential medications represent the fastest growing expense in health care today. In the past 15 years, from roughly 1987, Canada's prescription drug bill has jumped by 344% according to a study last month by the Canadian Institution for Health Information.
There are many reasons for the increase. As the member for St. John's West indicated, new drugs have been approved for everything from arthritis to Alzheimer's, adding to the total drug bill. We recognize demographically that an aging population is demanding and requiring more essential medication. International trade deals like the agreement on trade, related aspects of intellectual property rights, or TRIPS as it is known by its acronym, have strengthened the patent protection enjoyed by big name pharmaceutical companies.
The TRIPS deal has allowed these companies to keep their prices high for the 20 year lifespan of drug patents. It has helped pharmaceutical companies net unbelievably high profits on billions of dollars on research into new medicine. The argument goes that without the profits derived from those patents innovative medicine would languish. I do not think there can be much doubt.
Scott Sinclair, a trade policy analyst, put it well when he said that there was no coincidence escalating drug costs occurred during this period of excessive patent protection. He went on to add that 20 years was a very long time, particularly when we are talking about access to essential medications.
Other comments were made by Médecins Sans Frontières and Dr. John Foster, a principal researcher at the North-South Institute. They are also very concerned and urge the countries in the free trade area of the Americas agreement not to bow to pressure from pharmaceutical companies to strengthen further drug patents.
According to some of those opposed, pharmaceutical companies are not interested in making drugs that help poor people, and most of the people in the world are poor. They say that it is a matter of political will that we can put solutions in place but political will is very weak from what they have seen. We in this caucus would certainly agree with that.
There are members on the government side who were on the opposition benches 10 or 15 years ago. It is a veritable who's who. In some of the time I have remaining I would like to make some reference to them. The Minister of Industry, as member for Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, talked about the changes that were brought in by the Mulroney government. He asked this question:
Are they really serious when they say that the sick, the poor, the elderly, and those who live on fixed incomes have to subsidize R and D in Canada?
Are they really serious when they say that the only way the universities, the post-secondary institutions, the centres of excellence of Canada will have any money for R and D is if we take it out of the pockets of Canada's senior citizens and Canada's sick.
Those were comments of the Minister of Industry, the minister who is piloting the legislation through the House of Commons.