Indeed, what a disappointment. The current government House leader, the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, read into the record on November 16, 1992, a stack of postcards. He guesstimated them to be four or five inches thick. One postcard read:
“On June 23, 1992, the federal government introduced Bill C-91, legislation intended to extend retroactively to December 20, 1991, patent protection for brand name pharmaceuticals and eliminate Canada's system of compulsory licensing. This legislation will result in significantly higher drug prices in Canada and its retroactive provisions will cripple the Canadian owned generic pharmaceutical industry”. This is not what I said. This is what hundreds and hundreds of Canadians have said.
He used to care. That was then and now it is another day.
The current Solicitor General of Canada, the member for Cardigan, also entered the debate at that time and quoted from Green Shield. He said:
The average cost of a prescription claim has risen at a rate in excess of 11% compounded annually for the period 1987 through 1991, well above the CPI rate.
The Minister for Veterans Affairs and Western Economic Diversification, the member for Saint Boniface, said:
When I talk about Canadians who will need assistance with drugs and medicine, I am of course referring mainly to seniors. Except in rare cases, the need for medical attention tends to increase as we grow older. I suggest it is unfortunate that legislation such as this be allowed to cause hardship to the elderly.
There are those who are sick often, sometimes over the course of several years, and who will require medicine during most of their lives. Costs are already prohibitive. We suggest, and there is evidence to back this up, that they will only go higher with this legislation. I find it is absolutely irresponsible on the part of this government to go ahead with this
He wound up his diatribe against Bill C-91 by saying:
—I have no choice but to say no to Bill C-91 for those Canadians who will need medication and in particular the seniors and those who have need of medication because of their medical condition.
The chief government whip, the member for Ottawa West said:
I think it is important to reiterate what this bill is all about. It is not about extending patent protection for pharmaceutical drugs. It is about completely eliminating, for the entire 20-year patent period, the right of any generic manufacturer to produce a drug that is under patent and to compete with that drug on the open marketplace.
What is the impact going to be? The impact for Canadians is going to be higher drug costs. Right now, generic drugs being produced while the original is still under patent cost 53 per cent of the cost of the patent drug. That is a saving of 47 per cent for Canadian consumers.
What we have in Canada is branch plant drug companies. We do not have basic research. We do not have the kind of foundation that this country wants to see in this industry that is the most profitable in our economy and it does not deserve the kind of protection that this Conservative government is now proposing to offer.
This bill would limit competition. It says that for 20 years one does not have to compete against anyone else.
She concluded by saying:
If NAFTA tells us what we can and we cannot do to provide health care for Canadian citizens then we do not need NAFTA. That is just one more reason to vote against it.
There was one more dissertation that I would like to acknowledge and that is the member for Kenora—Rainy River currently the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. The minister said in December 1992:
It is a fact that Americans pay 62% more for prescription drugs than the average Canadian citizen. If we were to follow that through, that means by the year 2010 we will be on a level playing field with the Americans. Our drugs should rise proportionately to the point where we will be equal to the Americans as far as the price that we pay for drugs.
The question has to be asked in this place. That is why we are debating this, not because we are the loyal opposition and we disagree with the legislation. It is our responsibility, as members of parliament, to put the facts before the Canadian people so that they can decide whether the legislation that the government is presenting today is a good piece of legislation for the good of all Canadians.
We have the minister who negotiated the free trade agreement and is now the Minister of Industry negotiating on our behalf another agreement, the legislation we are talking about. His negotiating skills are what we are talking about today. The minister of Indian affairs also said:
—Canadians, as consumers, are going to give up roughly $4 billion out of their pockets for higher drug prices because now what we are talking about is going from the Canadian system to a level playing field similar to the American system.
We can see from that lineup that this is one reason we are very concerned about it. The flip-flop by the Liberals on this issue is absolutely breathtaking.
In Canada today we spend more on drugs than on doctors. Prescription drug costs are the fastest growing cost of health care forcing provincial and territorial governments to pay more, causing fewer families to be able to afford the drugs they need.
I had the opportunity on Saturday night to hear from a well known physician in the Saskatoon community, Dr. John Bury, who was talking about the impact that prescription drugs have had. He recalled the drug benefit plan the Saskatchewan government put in place many years ago that worked so well for such a long time. Essentially it was eroded because the government in the early to mid-1990s could not afford to continue as drug prices increased by the 344% that I talked about earlier. His point now is that there are people in Saskatoon who are unable to afford to purchase drugs. Drug prices have risen so much they are now out of the reach of many ordinary and poorer Canadians.
A personal friend of mine is in hospital recovering from a stroke brought about, almost certainly, by the fact that she neglected to have her blood thinners upgraded or the prescription renewed. In some ways we are putting additional costs on our medical health system by examples such as that.
In a country with $100 billion to spend on tax cuts, one in ten Canadians do not fill prescriptions because he or she cannot afford it. Since 1990 drug prices have risen by 87%. If drug prices are not brought down increased health funding will not go to patients but to multinational pharmaceutical companies.
Public health care needs to get its fast rising costs under control. Families need lower prices to afford the drugs they need. However that is not what the government has been offering. It chose to break promises it made as recently as 1997, let alone in 1987 and 1992 in its red book on a national pharmacare plan. It chose to ignore new ideas for health care like a national bulk buying project that would bring costs down. I note that Australia has such a program.
It chose to keep Mr. Mulroney's drug patent law, Bill C-91, which provides for longer patents. When in opposition, the Liberals promised, as I have tried to point out in my speech, to rescind the law. The Liberal government chose to support more powerful trade agreements even though these agreements make it harder for Canada to use cheaper generic drugs. It chose to accept one trade ruling that made it harder for Canada to use cheaper drugs.
All of this leads me to recall the old Irish proverb, and we have seen it time and again over the years since Confederation, “You can vote for whichever party you want but the government always wins”.