Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to enter into the debate on Bill C-274. I would like to begin by paying tribute to my colleague from Windsor West, who is the sponsor of this important piece of legislation, and to recognize the contribution he has made to this debate. It is safe to say that among those of us here he has become known as somewhat of a champion on this issue of providing accessible, affordable, necessary pharmaceutical products to the Canadian public within the confines and parameters of a fair system, but one that provides access to necessary drugs without bankrupting the system.
I should point out that Bill C-274 relates to access to less costly pharmaceutical products. What could be more poignant, timely or topical as we all wrestle with the problem of our health care system and the difficulty in providing these basic needs to Canadians. We know that the quickest growing aspect of our health care system is the exorbitant prices that we are paying for necessary life-saving drugs.
I begin by simply recognizing how important the job is that my colleague from Windsor West has done in bringing this important issue to the House of Commons today.
This bill has been stripped down to its most lean form. One could sum it up by simply saying that the bill seeks to repeal the patented medicines notice of compliance regulations. We argue that Canada's notice of compliance regulations regime fosters an anti-competitive behaviour among drug manufacturers. It is antithetical to what needs to be done in our pharmaceutical industry, in that it does not encourage research and development and innovation. It means that Canadians, governments, hospitals and benefit providers are paying more for drugs than would be necessary if a fair system were in place.
After careful consideration of this issue, my colleague from Windsor West has arrived at the conclusion that the single most effective thing he could do to enable more Canadians to get the drugs they need at affordable prices is to repeal the regime known now as the patented medicines notice of compliance regulations.
It would be helpful to look at a bit of the history. From the 1920s to the 1980s our government played a key role in limiting market monopolies on pharmaceutical products. In the interests of access and competition, our government played an interventionist role to limit and restrict the possibility of monopolies. The regulations that we talk about took their first form relatively recently, in 1993, in a bill which I think we can all remember, the infamous Bill C-91, billed as the biggest corporate giveaway. The biggest corporate sellout in Canadian history was Bill C-91. We remember it with great regret as a turning point in the health of our health care system.
Compulsory licensing, I should explain, allowed a non-patent holder to compete with lower priced versions. The compulsory licence issue was done away with in Bill C-91. This is one of the most dangerous elements. People sounded the alarm. I remember the NDP passionately fighting against Bill C-91 at the time. The debates were very public and high profile.
It seemed that pressure from the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement in 1988 and then subsequently NAFTA in 1994 exerted enormous pressures that radically altered the way Canada dealt with pharmaceutical patents.
The compulsory licensing aspect was one of the changes. In fact a federal commission of inquiry in 1985 concluded that the use of compulsory licensing had saved hundreds of millions of dollars in the health care system at the time, had no adverse impact on the research and development of pharmaceutical products, or on the multinational drug companies regarding investment in research and development. It was found and held to be true in 1985 that government intervention in the form of compulsory licensing of real competition was saving money.
That reason and logic was thrown out the window in those days in the rush to implement the free trade agreement. Whoever negotiated these things on behalf of Canada I have always maintained should be dragged into the streets and shot because they really did sell us down the road. The names of the chief negotiators of the free trade agreement and NAFTA should live in infamy in Canadian history for what they did to us. We remember now the impact of NAFTA and the free trade agreement radically altering the way Canada deals with pharmaceutical patents.
If another federal commission of inquiry were held today, it would likely find the exact inverse of the 1985 findings. This radical shift in government policy that my colleague from Windsor West is trying to address has undermined the possibility of government to retain some element of control over pharmaceutical pricing to ensure that Canadians have access to affordable pharmaceuticals at the pharmacy counter and in our public health care system.
There is a contradiction in that there is a gap we cannot even span between the stated purpose of these notice of compliance regulations and the actual results of them. In actual fact the purpose of the NOC regulations was to protect patent rights, et cetera. Rather than protecting legitimate patent rights, these NOC regulations have actually incorporated and caused an abuse of litigation options and in fact of people extending, artificially some would add, the patent protection for a period longer than the 20 years, which we argue is already very generous.
I see I am running out time, so I will simply cite some of the key issues that others may not have touched on. One is evergreening, which implies the perpetual renewal of patents with small or insignificant changes or modifications to an existing drug. This is a bastardization of the patent protection that was agreed to under international guidelines and in our bilateral trade agreement with the United States. It is being abused widely. I will give an example.
In 2003, 103 patents were added to the patent registry by brand name companies but there were only 16 actual new substances approved. In other words, these patents were being listed based on a change in the colour of the pill, based on a change in the recommended dosage. The tiniest, most insignificant excuses are being used to provide a monopoly on these drugs, where companies can charge the highest possible amount without worrying about generic competition. This is what is killing us, figuratively and literally in some cases, because Canadians cannot afford the drugs they need because we are shackled by these monopolistic biases built into the system.
My colleague has tried to address this by eliminating the notice of compliance regulations within the drug patent review mechanism. I commend my colleague from Windsor West for being bold enough to bring this initiative before the House of Commons on behalf of Canadians who deserve access to life-saving drugs. If that means standing up to big pharma now and then, we are not afraid to do it. We are not going to sit and listen to apologists for big pharma justify the rip-off of the system in the form of billions of dollars. We are being fleeced by big pharma. My colleague from Windsor West and the NDP caucus are trying to address that. We should all stand up and support my colleague's bill today.