Mr. Speaker, I would like to start my speech on Bill S-17 by following up on some comments from the member for Winnipeg North Centre in answer to questions from the member for Palliser. The member asked why we were dealing with this bill which originated from the Senate and why did we think the bill originated in the Senate?
There is no secret there. It is obvious why the government chose to introduce this bill through the back door, through the unelected Senate. It was put forward by the hon. leader of the government in the Senate, a member from Winnipeg. It is to her great shame and discredit that she is doing the government's dirty work.
The government did not want to introduce this bill in the House for fear of reprisals from Canadians and from seniors' organizations. There is a growing and mounting movement against this regressive step that this was the path of least resistance for the government. It was an expedient move to introduce this bill through the Senate so it would come up for debate without the usual public announcement from the minister.
The Minister of Industry spoke at length on this bill earlier today. He was quoted extensively, when he represented the opposition, as speaking against any such move to extend patent protection. He is now the champion for international pharmaceutical companies to increase their profits yet again.
I would like to address another point which was very well made by the member for Winnipeg Centre. Just how much profit is enough profit to keep drug North companies doing the important research work they do?
Speaker after speaker has said that the NDP does not understand how necessary it is for drug companies to do research and should they not be compensated for doing that research. There is no disagreement on this side. We value the scientists who work hard to find new cures to many ailments. We are balking because we have never really tested the water. We have never had a debate as to what a reasonable profit would be for these companies. How many years of patent protection do they really need to not only pay for their research costs, but to appreciate a reasonable profit?
Notwithstanding the whole debate, some of us believe that this sort of scientific pursuit should be above and beyond the realm of the free market altogether. Perhaps we should start with that basic premise. Some of us still believe that some things are too important to leave up to the profit motive and to the free hand of the marketplace. That it is somehow the be all and end all and the only thing that would motivate people to do something as humanitarian as finding cures for illnesses and getting necessary drugs into the hands of people that need them most.
I believe there are a significant number of Canadians, scientists and business people who would agree that the single most important thing we could do for moral and ethical reasons would be to find a way to get drugs into the hands of people who need them without bankrupting our health care system and our seniors who find it difficult to meet the costs of the medications they so desperately need.
This bill further accentuates the problem of the high cost of drugs. It makes us wonder whose side the government is on. Whose side is it championing here?
We find this inexorable link between the Liberal party and the pharmaceutical international drug companies. It makes one wonder whose interests it is bound to represent in the House of Commons.
Canadians hoped that they would have a champion in their government and that someone would be there advocating on their behalf to represent their interests in this very serious problem that faces the nation. Yet what do we find? Rather than legislation being introduced that might provide some relief or some plan to reduce the cost of drugs, we are once again fighting this decade long battle of trying to hold back the length of the patent protection on intellectual property, so that the generic drug companies can start to replicate these necessary drugs and make them cheaper and more affordable so our health care system is not crippled or hog-tied by this.
Bill S-17 builds off of Bill C-91. Bill C-91 was called the greatest corporate giveaway in Canadian history. I remember the challenge and the demonstrations in the streets. Canadians came out en masse to voice their disappointment with the then Mulroney government when it introduced Bill C-91. They were furious and outraged. The Mulroney Tories were crazy enough to take on senior citizens again. They did it once when they wanted to de-index the pension and they got their wrists slapped pretty quickly and they withdrew.
Yet, just like a kid who puts his hand on the hot element of a stove, they chose to do it again and infuriated citizens all across the country. They introduced another bill that would cost them more in direct out of pocket expense than even the dastardly plan to deindex the pension. When Bill C-91 came along, it mobilized a whole cross generation protest movement to fight against this thing.
I believe it was one of the key issues in the 1993 election, on October 25, 1993, when Canadians kicked the Tories out in the most humiliating defeat in Canadian history and reduced them to two seats. They did this partly to voice their strong objection to the changes proposed under Bill C-91.
When the Liberals took over in 1993, rather than do what they promised to do and bring in a national pharmacare plan that would relieve people from the crippling costs and spiralling out of control drug costs, they embarked on a cross-country national tour, a task force, and the best way to buy time. We They did not do away with Bill C-91 or reverse its terrible impact.
The findings of the task force were the most disappointing flip-flop in recent memory. The Liberals were elected on the promise that they would champion the interests of Canadian people in terms of high drug costs. What did they do? They came back, shrugged their shoulders and said that they had studied the issue to death. They said they had investigated it thoroughly and heard from Canadians, but there is nothing we can do. Therefore, the 20 year patent protection stood. In other words, there was no relief is in site.
This was in spite of predictions from people in their own party. Prominent Liberals of the opposition, some who are now cabinet ministers in the Liberal government, issued dire warnings. They said that if they went ahead with Bill C-91 and the 20 year drug patent protection, it would cause an enormous compounding escalation in drugs costs to ordinary Canadians. That did not deter them one minute. That did not hold them back one iota.
I guess that is the beauty of being a Liberal. They do not see any contradiction in that kind of flip-flop whatsoever. They seem to hold their heads high, take a 180° turn and say the opposite to what they were elected on in the fall of 1993.
We have quotes of prominent Liberals of what they said in the House of Commons. Dramatic speeches were made on this issue. Some of my favourites came from the current House leader of the Liberal party who was absolutely passionate about this issue. He was making the case that this kind of a drug patent protection would be devastating to our health care system. Even then many of us who were monitoring these things knew that the single biggest cost to our health care system was soon to be drugs, and that is the case now.
On a chart on the wall we can see the costs of hospitals and doctors are going up. Drug costs are skyrocketing through the ceiling. Our worst fears have been realized. In fact the worst fears of the hon. House leader for the government were realized.
In 1992 he said “I turn the argument right around on the members across”, meaning the government side members. “Doing something that will damage our health care system in Canada is not going to make us more competitive”. That is a given. “It is perhaps one of those things that in the long run and perhaps even in the short run are going to make us less competitive as a nation because it is removing from us one of those useful tools that we have now”, meaning affordable health care and affordable access to pharmaceutical drugs.
I appreciate those remarks and can associate them. I would have been proud to know that individual when he that thought that way. I am not so crazy about the point of view that seems to be adopted by those same people across the way today.
We have a situation now where the Liberal Party and the government of the day are being the champions and advocates for the multinational drug companies or chief apologists for the multinational drug companies. Whose side are they on? Canadians are desperate for somebody to advocate on their behalf. They are desperate to have somebody speak out loudly for them, to stand on hind legs and if necessary oppose the WTO or at least put up a good fight instead of kowtowing.
Every time we send one of our representatives to one of these meetings, whether it is in Davos, Switzerland or wherever the ministers are meeting to deal with the WTO, they always come back the bearers of bad news. They say they thought they might be able to do a little something or a little horse trading, but in actual fact they could do nothing.
We as a parliament are being rendered more and more irrelevant, because we have lost our ability to put in place a domestic drug policy that would act on behalf of the people of Canada. We are being told that we have traded that ability away. It is shameless. Whoever traded away that ability, frankly has not done a service to Canada. If our chief negotiators cannot do anything better than that, if they cannot come back with a better package than that, we better start looking for better negotiators. They are clearly not representing the interests and the points of view of Canadians very adequately.
There are certainly other prominent Liberals who spoke out over and over again on this back in the days when Liberal members stood up in defence of Canadians who needed relief on drug prices.
The current solicitor general pointed out that the average cost of a prescription claim had risen at a rate in excess of 11% compounded annually for the period of 1987 through 1991, well above the CPR rate. That was a good observation. I have bad news for the current solicitor general. Even though he was concerned back in 1991-92 about the escalating costs of drugs, he would be surprised to learn that cumulatively from 1987 to today the cost of drugs increased 340%. That is the single highest and fastest growing cost in our health care system. It is out of control. He was worried about 11% annually.
Again, rather than some plan from the Liberals on how they might cope with this and help us deal with the crisis, all we have is another bill, which came in through the back door through the unelected Senate, that will compound the issue and make it even worse. It will extend the 20 year patent protection to the remaining 30 products which are still at 17 years.
The NDP caucus argues that even if we do accept that the private sector has to be involved in research and development of new drugs and that they deserve to recoup their costs and make a reasonable profit, we argue that 10 years is more than adequate. I challenge them to make the case as to why they need more than 10 years. I do not think the debate has been put to legislatures. We have not debated here.
We know that prior to the free trade agreement having imposed 20 year patent protection, the pharmaceutical drug companies were the most profitable industry sector in our economy. If people owned shares in those companies they did well. We found it necessary to buy into their line, and they always wanted more.
There is an old adage where I come from that says capital has no conscience. These guys have an insatiable appetite for profit. They have an obligation to their shareholders to show the best possible rate of return. If they can increase their profits just by coming to government and saying they deserve and need 20 year patent protection, and if we blindly tell them to take their 20 years and let them compound their profits yet again, we are not doing our job in representing the interests of Canadian people. We are yielding far too readily. We are not putting up a good fight. We are not even putting up a good debate or a good argument.
The 11 or 12 lonely NDP speakers in the House of Commons are the only people we have heard today advocating on behalf of the Canadian people. All the other parties are advocating on behalf of multinational drug companies. Not even our domestic generic drug industry is being represented here today. We are hearing speaker after speaker on the government side say the poor international drug companies do not make enough money or have the tools they need to find cures to the illnesses we have.
Is anyone speaking for Canadians here, for senior citizens who must cut prescriptions in half to make them stretch for the whole month? Does anyone even care about that any more? In listening to the speakers one would not think so. They are not advocating on behalf of Canadians. They are advocating on behalf of drug companies that do quite well around the world, frankly, without gouging Canada.
Bill S-17 would go even further. It would tie our hands further by limiting the ability of generic drug companies to ready themselves for the day they are allowed to sell their product. It prohibits them from producing and stockpiling new drugs so that on day one after the 20 year patent expires they would be ready to release them into the community and into the hands of the people who need them.
Under Bill S-17 that would be limited and restricted, and I know why. Although pharmaceutical companies enjoy a 20 year patent protection a bit of a charade goes on. When the companies get close to the 20 year deadline they modify their drug a bit and ask for an extension. They explain that it is not the same drug it was 19 years ago when they first developed it. They say it is now a new and improved drug. They negotiate and are often given another five to seven more years of holiday, of exclusive monopoly.
Is that competition? Is that what the champions of free competition support? I hear the Canadian Alliance Party and people like it advocate giving one company an exclusive monopoly for 20 years in spite of all reason and logic, in spite of all the moral and ethical arguments associated with getting drugs into the hands of people who need them. They are willing to turn their backs.
They are almost as chameleon-like as the Liberals in this regard. They are willing to change their colour all of a sudden and say competition is good and healthy, but in this case these companies should be given an absolute monopoly for 20 years. Let them really rake in the dough and then maybe they will find a cure for cancer. If their only motivation is to make money they will not do the type of research we need them to do.
There are a lot of medical conditions for which it is not economically viable to do research. Let us imagine an obscure condition which is probably curable but which perhaps only afflicts 5,000 people across the country. If profit, not the well-being of humanity, is the sole motive no one will bother doing the research to find a cure for that condition.
I point that out to illustrate what is fundamentally wrong with accepting that drug companies can, will and should be driven only by profit. That is the only interest here. There is a broader public interest to be served than just enhancing the profits of international drug companies.
I pointed out the inexorable link between the Liberal Party and the international drug cartel, arguably the single most effective and powerful lobby group in Ottawa. That is probably why we are seeing this rammed through by the parties which benefit so greatly from the largesse of the drug companies.
Prominent Liberals like Judy Erola did not even miss a step when she went from being a member of parliament to being the chief lobbyist for international drug companies. It seems that any Liberal hack who runs out of gas in his or her political life can find a job in the offices of the drug companies. There is a connection there. There is a link that borders on conflict because we are not looking after the best interests of Canadians. We are being coerced more and more, through powerful people, their powerful contacts and their powerful cheque books, to look after the interests of drug companies before we look after the interests of senior citizens and Canadians.
I find it harder and harder to sit here, and frankly I find myself more and more disappointed that nobody in the House of Commons has the courage to stand and advocate on behalf of Canadians instead of the drug companies, except those in the NDP caucus today. There will be a record of this debate. I hope Canadians are well aware of what is going on here today as we put the final stake through the heart of any notion of a comprehensive plan to make drugs affordable for the Canadian people.