Madam Speaker, as the member of Parliament for the expansive riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, I take this opportunity to thank the good people of my constituency who have repeatedly placed their trust in me to represent their interests in the Parliament of Canada. Being a member of Parliament is a unique privilege, and I thank them for that privilege.
I rise to speak to Bill C-14, an act to implement certain provisions of the economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 30, 2020. Specifically, I intend to focus on those provisions in the legislation that deal with the COVID-19 vaccine shortage in Canada.
I send a clear message on behalf of all Canadians to the government and to the Prime Minister: Canada, as well as beating the COVID-19 virus, must prepare for the next pandemic. Unfortunately, the federal government’s response to the pandemic has been a tragic comedy of errors. Mixed messages on masks, with federal cabinet ministers early on advising against their use because the government had thrown away or given the masks we had to China, to now insisting that masks be worn, has confused people. That confusion of mixed messages led to the spread of the COVID-19 virus, with tragic consequences for our seniors, particularly those in long-term care.
What should have been stated by the Prime Minister during one of his cuckoo clock appearances was, “We do not have enough masks,” and “Stay home.”
In March 2020, there was an awareness the virus was coming. The border should have been closed to all travellers to keep the virus out of Canada. Following up on the Liberal meme “man-made,” as in man-made global warming, what we have in Canada is a man-made vaccine shortage crisis.
The Part 5 amendments to the Food and Drugs Act contained in Bill C-14 come up far short of what is required to fix broken Liberal policy.
It is important to note the pharmaceutical industry has been trying to reach out to the government for years. After the short-sighted changes made by the government in 2017, it is as if the government was setting itself up for failure.
A letter written to the Financial Post by Paul Lucas, the former CEO of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, states:
The question is: Why is Canada not able to acquire more vaccine early?
Is it because the Liberal government has virtually no relationship other than as a buyer and regulator with the only organizations that could possibly produce a vaccine quickly and in sufficient quantities, the global innovative pharmaceutical industry?
Successive Liberal governments, including this one, have created an unfavourable environment for investment and commercial success for innovative pharmaceutical companies in Canada. They have made it very difficult for Canadian CEOs to attract investment to Canada despite many attempts by the industry to work with governments to do so. They have made no effort to work with the innovative industry to encourage a partnership that could deliver tremendous value to the health-care system and the economy and give Canadians early access to new medicines and vaccines.
Not surprisingly, the industry has gone elsewhere to invest—to places like the U.K., the U.S. and the EU where that positive environment does exist. They are all performing better than Canada on early vaccine acquisition.
It is important for Canadians to hear the truth about why we are at the back of the line when it comes to life-saving medicines to protect our population.
I am pleased to reference previous comments I have made in Parliament to inform Canadians of what the government does not want them to know. From the very onset of the pandemic, the Prime Minister has been disrespectful of Canadians, starting with parliamentarians. What has been particularly predictable has been the tactic by the Prime Minister and his party to try to pass off blame for his government's failings. His attempts to smear former prime minister Stephen Harper over the current government's lack of action are pathetic and dishonest.
Canadians should not be surprised to learn that the reason Canada does not have any capacity to manufacture its own vaccine is a direct consequence of the policy of the Prime Minister's father, Pierre, when he eliminated patent protection for drug manufacturers. This policy produced short-term gain for the long-term pain Canadians find themselves in today. The short-term gain was the drop in drug prices when the patent protection was reduced. The pain was felt more slowly.
When the Liberal Party changed the patent protection of new drugs in 1969, it led to a brain drain. There was an exodus of major drug companies that used to do their research in Canada. The University of Toronto was world-renowned as the place Banting and Best did their Nobel Prize-calibre research that led to the discovery of insulin. Montreal had a vibrant research community. That proud legacy has been lost.
What Canada received in its place were knock-offs: cheap generic drugs that rely on the work of others. It was not until the election of a Conservative government in 1984 that a real attempt was made to reverse the damage. During legislative committee hearings, the deans of the leading medical schools pleaded with Conservative parliamentarians to fix Pierre's mistake. If a gifted Canadian medical researcher wanted to continue in his or her field, they were forced to leave Canada. This fact was noticed in our medical schools.
For every successful discovery of a miracle drug, there are a hundred failures. The money for failures comes from the successes. The pharmaceutical companies could not afford to have their research stolen by generic companies. It made sense to do their drug research where they manufactured the drugs. The Patented Medicine Prices Review Board that was formed could not bring back the companies that had fled Canada. Whenever government interferes in the marketplace, a price must be paid. The price today is Canada has no domestic capability to manufacture its own vaccine. This leaves Canadians and its enterprises where we are today.
I now correct the record from comments made by the Prime Minister and the federal Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, who wrongly stated on national media that Canada does not have any domestic vaccine production because GlaxoSmithKline Canada closed its facility during the Harper years. In fact, the former CEO of that facility confirmed it is still operational and manufactures much of Canada’s annual flu vaccine. The retired CEO of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline went on to state:
The Mulroney and Harper governments supported the innovative industry by improving the patent landscape but Canada only partially recovered and to this day does not have globally competitive patent protection. The negative trend continues even now with the imminent implementation of a punitive pricing regime through new federal...[set of] regulations. One now has to ask: where are the generic companies when we badly need innovation? Liberal government pharmaceutical policy has failed Canadians at our time of greatest need.
The punitive legislation being referred to is legislation that the federal government rammed through Parliament before the last election and which Bill C-14 should be fixing. The government needs to be open, honest and transparent with Canadians about the true cost of the pharmacare promise made to the fourth party in the House of Commons.
This is what the president of Pfizer Canada has to say about that bad legislation made by the federal government before the last election:
The reality is, had the government applied its new pricing guidelines to COVID-19 vaccine candidates, our ability to move at the speed of science would have been restricted. This should be a key learning. As future innovative breakthrough treatments in areas such as oncology, rare disease and acute care are discovered, Canada needs to have a regulatory and pricing framework that encourages and fosters early access for patients.
In this regard, our industry association Innovative Medicines Canada has proposed an alternative approach to the federal government that would allow it to achieve its public policy objectives of reducing the price of drugs without undermining patient access to potentially life-saving medicines or vaccines, clinical trials, or investments in the country’s life sciences sector.
The shortage that Canadians are facing today is a direct result of bad decisions made by a succession of Liberal governments.
I will conclude with those remarks.