Mr. Speaker, I will follow up on the comments of my colleague who just spoke. This is indeed a bill that merits our attention. It is an issue that merits our attention. I think that in some ways we have had intermittent attention paid to it around Internet pharmacies, but perhaps not in the larger perspective of what drug exportation has the potential to mean.
In my understanding of the bill, and I will look to my Liberal colleague to be nodding or shaking her head if I misspeak, there is a concern that for Canadians, for the most part in some kind of emergency, drugs would not be available because we would have a shortage through bulk exportation or exportation in large amounts to the United States. The example that my Liberal colleague from St. Paul's used was around Tamiflu.
There are a couple of things that affect this. When the United States politicians introduced the pharmaceutical market access and drug safety act, and I believe it was in 2007, I think that efforts or initiatives were stepped up in order to be able to access bulk exports on an even greater basis, because that act appeared to be opening even further a door that was probably open anyway but was going to be open on a much more official kind of basis.
I live in the border city of Surrey. Our 400,000 people make us a city. I do not think that this bill is intended to stop the carload of senior citizens who drive up there from Bellingham to get their personal prescriptions filled. I think we have to be clear about how the bill is not intended to simply completely close down the gates to any kind of sharing or purchasing of drugs by American citizens.
We know that we are very fortunate in this country. Although our system could be better in that we could have a national drug plan, and we are working on it, that is for another day, We are able to have our prescriptions at prices that are more affordable for us than they are for many American citizens who indeed either cannot afford them or do not have coverage.
There are somewhere around 250 million Americans who do not have any medical coverage whatsoever and they are not going to be able to afford prescriptions anyway. While we have some people in those circumstances, it is much more severe in the United States. I do not think this bill is saying that those kinds of people would not be able to access any drugs at all from Canada.
However, I think there has been a dramatic expansion and there is a potential for a dramatic expansion of importation to the U.S. of drugs in large bulk amounts. That is perhaps a bit different from what we heard from another colleague. With the United States opening the door, and with manufacturers here who I am sure would be willing to sell in bulk amounts, I think that would be a dramatic expansion.
I do not think there is any question that the business of Internet pharmacies has decreased. I hope, as my Liberal colleague does, that it is because people perhaps have a greater understanding of what some of the risks might be and are able to access those drugs at home. This is not about the expansion or contraction of Internet pharmacies filling individual prescriptions, although those indeed are dropping.
There is an interesting question about this that I get asked all the time when this comes up. It has come up in B.C. a number of times as we see people coming in from the United States. People say that this will probably create jobs, so why can the manufacturers not put on more shifts and manufacture more drugs? It is perfect, they say, there is the solution.
However, the manufacture of drugs does not work in the same way that manufacturing tomato sauce works. Some of those drugs have ingredients that are perhaps more scarce in terms of their biological sources. Also, it takes time to manufacture additional amounts of drugs.
As well, many medications are time dated, so drug manufacturers cannot just create a warehouse or a storehouse full of medications that are ready to export when somebody asks for them. They may be out of date, and the manufacturers are not going to have the excess sitting on their shelves, excess that they have not been able to forecast. They do their business based on forecasting, which is primarily based on the needs of Canadian patients. That is where they develop their business plan. They develop it on what they see as the trend line in medications that are being used and approved in Canada.
There are two other things I want to mention. I have seen what happens in emergencies. Not every drug that would be bulk exported is a vaccine, and I understand that, but vaccines are part of that bulk export. When SARS hit Canada, I was at Home Depot one day and saw people pushing huge carts full of crates and crates of masks out of the store. By the way, those little paper masks would not have done any good anyway, as we discovered. As we probably know anyway, they not terribly effective, but people were hoarding them in case something happened.
In any kind of an emergency there is this human response to hoard: drugs, food, things that will protect us, water, or whatever it might be. I worry that in the case of that emergency where a vaccine is needed, and again, Tamiflu is the example that was used, there might be a health risk for Canadians. I want everybody to be healthy. I want Americans, Canadians and people around the world to be healthy, but we have a responsibility as legislators of this country and as people involved in health to ensure that there are the health resources necessary to meet the needs of Canadian citizens.
When we are talking about bulk exporting, I have another concern. My understanding is that regulators at the border have said that they have an opportunity to check only about 1% of what crosses the border. We all know that there are such things as counterfeit drugs. I do not think there are going to be people looking to see whether these are counterfeit drugs that are being shipped across the border or whether they are being shipped across the border in a box that says “Christmas presents for Aunt Millie”.
Mr. Speaker is telling me that I have one minute left. I look forward to further debate on this bill, but when we are looking at bulk exports, I do think that there are many risks involved and it is only responsible of the Government of Canada to look at this and ensure that Canadians are protected first.