Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this evening to speak to this important legislation introduced by the hon. member for St. Paul's, who was absolutely the very best minister of public health in the history of Canada, and few would debate that.
I served in cabinet with the hon. member and she brought to the cabinet table a tremendous understanding of health and wellness issues. In fact, I remember her from time to time saying as a minister that we in Canada do not necessarily have a health care system, we have a sick care system.
We look after people only when they are sick. We do not do enough on wellness and preventative medicine, and helping keep people well. She brought a great sense of knowledge, practicality, and at the same time, vision to her role as minister of public health. I am very pleased to support her bill today.
The whole issue of bulk import of drugs into the United States is an extremely important one. In the U.S., the cost of drugs to Americans is a tremendously politically charged issue. It is one that is at the very centre of the health care debate in the U.S.
We all know the challenges that our own health care system here in Canada faces, but the U.S. health care system is under even more pressure because of the inefficiencies and ineffective nature of the private insurance system and some of the other challenges facing the U.S. system.
American legislators are debating, and have debated, the whole idea of allowing bulk import of drugs from Canada through Internet pharmacies. In fact, what they are doing is trying to achieve what we have achieved here in Canada in terms of our regulatory framework around drug pricing.
The more efficient approach for them to take, and the less intrusive approach in terms of the impact on our public policy and our citizens, would be for them to simply regulate their drugs with a similar approach to our approach here in Canada, which effectively assures Canadians good access to important and lifesaving pharmaceuticals at a more reasonable price.
Instead of that, the legislators like to say that they will not regulate drug prices in the United States of America, but instead of regulating them there they outsource the regulation to Canada. That sounds perfectly innocent to Canadians. It does not sound like a big deal until we consider what the impact will be on our own drug supplies here in Canada.
The goal of the drug pricing regime we have in Canada is to ensure that Canadians have access to the pharmaceuticals they need at a reasonable price. It was never intended to, and never designed to, provide Americans with drug prices at a low cost.
American politicians are saying they are against price regulations. It is kind of an ideological perspective, not unlike our colleagues opposite sometimes on certain issues if I may say that respectfully, and similarly wrong as well. The fact is what they are doing by outsourcing their drug pricing regime to Canada is actually jeopardizing the access for Canadians to the drugs they need at reasonable prices.
The question we have to ask ourselves is this. Why would multi-national pharmaceutical companies that invest billions of dollars into research and development continue to supply Canada to the same extent that they have in the past if in fact the products they were shipping to Canada were being used to effectively cannibalize the market in the U.S. and reduce their profits?
It stands to reason that in a market-based economy they will make a decision to the benefit of their shareholders that will effectively prevent Canadians from having access to the drugs that they need at the price they want.
It is important for us to do two things. First, we need to ban the export of pharmaceuticals to the U.S. Our pricing regime was never intended to create some artificial regulatory arbitrage between the two countries which have very clever entrepreneurs. I have a lot of respect for entrepreneurs as I, my dad and my grandfather were all entrepreneurs. However, whenever there is a difference in regulatory regimes there is a potential for some sort of arbitrage, and that, effectively, is what is going on here.
No value is being created by the bulk export. It is not a sustainable industry. It is one that has a nascent profitability but it is one that, while it provides some pure profitability, it does jeopardize the long term access Canadians have to the drugs they need at reasonable prices.
I think we need to make the point very clear with American legislators that they cannot simply continue to avoid the debate on issues like drug regulatory frameworks. We also need to point out to organizations like the American Association of Retired People and others, the equivalent of CARP here in Canada, that what they are pushing for is not even in the long term interest of Americans.
Not only is this dangerous for Canadians in terms of reducing our citizens' capacity to have the drugs they need, but in the long term it actually does jeopardize the security of the pharmaceutical supply chain to Americans.
First, we need to ban the export of drugs to Internet pharmacies to the U.S. and, second, we need to make it very clear to American legislators and perhaps to Americans directly that this type of short term band-aid solution could jeopardize the security of their supply chain for their pharmaceuticals in the long term. Therefore, it is a no win situation for citizens on both sides of the border.