John Solomon

[Division No. 93, February 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, members of the NDP vote yes on this motion.

[The Canada Shipping Act, February 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, members of the NDP will vote yes on this amendment.

[Small Business Loans Act, February 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, members of the NDP present vote yes on this motion.

[Division No. 90, February 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, members of the NDP present this evening vote no.

[Patent Act, February 20th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I would request unanimous consent, even though the Liberals declined the previous request, for this bill to be votable today.

[Patent Act, February 20th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I request unanimous consent to refer this bill to committee for further study.

[Patent Act, February 20th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I wish to respond to my colleagues who made some comments with respect to Bill C-248. The parliamentary secretary read that speech exactly like Judy Erola and the Ministry of Industry wrote it. So congratulations. There is nothing new in that speech. The people of Canada know that and they will make their judgments come the next election.

With respect to my Bloc colleague, I am absolutely shocked at what the Bloc member said with regard to the pharmaceutical industry. This member said: “They don't care about the poor and the sick. It is a matter of the welfare of the wealthy and the other corporations that produce those pharmaceuticals in Quebec”. This is going to be a real surprise and wake-up call for all those poor and sick Quebeckers come the next referendum. If the Bloc and the PQ do not want to support them on an issue like this, why should they support Quebec on a referendum issue? We will see what happens when that comes along. I thank them for that comment.

With respect to the member for Haldimand—Norfolk—Brant, I am glad he stood in this House and indicated there are some concerns about it, but he did not catch the words I said earlier with respect to the World Trade Organization.

During the review in the industry committee, witness after witness, including international economists and lawyers, came before us and said there is a public interest clause in the WTO that if the government deems it in the public interest to contravene one of the WTO regulations because it is abusing that country, it can make amendments with respect to Bill C-91 or drug patents.

I ask the member to please consider those representations by the lawyers and economists, who are internationally renowned and who all share the same view that the WTO in the public interest can be changed in respect to issues pertinent to their country.

I thank my colleague from Souris—Moose Mountain for his constructive comments. He did say he would like to have some binding commitments with respect to Bill C-91.

I like my colleague's recommendation and I do support it, but I remind him that we did have commitments from the industry under Bill C-22 in 1997 and under Bill C-91. They were going to increase the number of jobs. Wrong. There are fewer jobs. They were going lower prices on prescription drugs. Wrong. Drug prices are higher. They made a commitment to increase R and D. Guess what? They are increasing a lot of their expenses in terms of marketing, going to doctors and hospitals, giving them computers and trips to Barbados and all these places for using their prescription drugs and they call that R and D, research and development.

I guess they research the doctor and develop him or her into selling their prescription drugs and in return they spend R and D money by giving them new computers, trips to the Bahamas or trips to Australia or wherever they want to go. That is not R and D, that is marketing. That should not be in any kind of regulations, whether it is under the Bill C-91 regulations or any other commitments.

I admire and thank the member for his constructive criticism. I will pursue that.

I want to make one other comment with respect to what happened in Argentina and Chile. I had a visit from an Argentinian politician who came here because of the work I was doing on Bill C-91. His name was Ernesto Algaba.

He told me that the people in Argentina were very concerned. They are all fanning out around the various countries of the world that are WTO co-signatories on Bill C-91. They are being forced by the American ambassador who is being told by the American Pharmaceutical Association to get the 20 year patent monopoly pricing in Argentina or else they would do something economic like maybe even pull out their ambassador from Argentina.

Ernesto Algaba told me he went to Chile, which had the same commitments that we had in Canada. After Chile passed the 20 year patent protection it lost jobs, closed plants, drug prices skyrocketed and health care costs skyrocketed.

We have international examples. There may have been a misunderstanding when the member for St. Catharines said we need this because of competitive pricing requirements. Bill C-91 is not competitive. It is a monopoly to charge whatever they want for prescription drugs for 20 years. That is not competition.

[Patent Act, February 20th, 1998]

moved that Bill C-248, an act to amend the Patent Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to stand in the House today to speak to Bill C-248, a bill that will attempt to basically make prescription drugs affordable to those who need it most.

I commence my remarks today by thanking my colleague, the member for Yukon, for seconding my bill.

Bill C-248 basically reduces the patent life of a new drug from 20 years to 17 years. It also reduces the period of market exclusivity on a new drug from 20 years to 4 years. Market exclusivity is the patent holder's monopoly on sales.

The largest increases in sales volume of a new drug typically occur during the first four years. After that the largely Canadian generic firms would have the right to manufacture copies on payment of a royalty to the brand name patent holding firms, a system called compulsory licensing.

In essence Bill C-248 provides for competition among prescription drug manufacturers that now have monopoly pricing authority under government Bill C-91.

This bill is supported by literally tens of thousands of seniors and thousands of other people in Canada who are ill and require prescription drugs. It is supported and endorsed by the Canadian Health Coalition, by the Government of Saskatchewan, by the Canadian Labour Congress and by many other organizations.

Debate on the patent drugs issue has often confused the two ideas of patents and market exclusivity. The two points were only made synonymous when the pharmaceutical bill, Bill C-91, was introduced in 1991. Bill C-22 in 1987 did not eliminate compulsory licensing. It simply extended the period of market exclusivity from four years to seven years.

Bill C-248 includes the best of the pre-Mulroney regime on prescription drug royalties and pricing. It respects so-called intellectual property rights by establishing a royalty payment to the patent holder, but it does not intervene in the market to create a monopoly for an undue length of time.

It is different from the 1987 system in that instead of a flat royalty rate Bill C-248 would allow for a sliding royalty scheme that rewards brand name pharmaceutical firms that actually did the majority of the research on a particular drug in Canada as opposed to now when they do it outside the country.

This proposal was adopted by the federal NDP as part of its platform in the last election. The NDP is the only party to consistently support competition in the prescription drug industry. This bill fulfils part of our campaign commitment to continue the fight for fair prescription drug prices.

I want to talk for a few minutes about costs and benefits. I believe it is time that we as parliamentarians admit that the current government policy of granting generous patent rights to foreigners as an enticement to establish a Canadian pharmaceutical industry just has not worked.

The policy sees public funds used to pay for these generous patent rights through billions of dollars in drug costs from our provincial medicare and drug plans. The drug companies get a five year average return on capital of over 14%. In return for this generous ROI, layoffs, a trade deficit in pharmaceuticals, less R and D per sales in the U.S. and expensive drugs for those who need them most are the rewards for Canadians.

We have not even begun to pay the worst of the costs yet. Health economists like Stephen Schondelmeyer and Queen's health policy group have examined the costs of Bill C-91. If we take their most conservative estimate and compare the situation under Bill C-91 to the case under Bill C-22, which was by no means perfect, the cost to consumers is between $4 billion and $7 billion over a 10 year period.

Most of that $7 billion will be paid after the year 2000, which as everyone knows is the new millennium. If you catch the millennium bug, the millennium drug prices are going to kill you. That is because the last of the drugs approved with a seven year market exclusivity under Bill C-22 will be able to go generic in 1999. We have not even begun to feel the pain, in other words.

In return for $4 billion to $7 billion in additional drug costs, we have received maybe $500 million in additional R and D which was already required to meet Canada's drug approval regulations. We lost over 2,000 jobs as well. We sustained huge cutbacks in transfer payments and social programs to pay down the debt and deficit, along with all the hardship and unemployment they entailed.

People say that the Patent Medicine Prices Review Board is there to protect against price gouging or skyrocketing prescription drug costs.

What exactly has been done by the PMPRB, the great defender of the people of Canada? The Patent Medicine Prices Review Board lacks accountability, which is a bit of a problem. It lacks transparency, which is a bit of a problem. It has no mandate to serve the public interest. It serves the interest of large multinationals across the world. Its methodology is skewed to give the appearance of price control while it permits drug cartels to charge the highest drug prices in the industrialized world.

Why do I say that? For example, they use in their formula for checking price controls seven OECD countries such as Britain, France, U.S., Switzerland and Sweden that have the highest costs of living anywhere in the world. They are more expensive than Canada. Yet the PMPRB uses as a reference retail prices which are never charged to the citizens of those countries or their drug plans because they always buy at discounts of up to 40%. It is very clear that we pay the highest prices anywhere in the world.

Our view is that the PMPRB has to make some changes. It needs a legislated mandate to protect the public interest, not large corporations. It should make drug comparisons of all twenty-nine OECD countries, not the seven most expensive countries in which to live in the OECD.

Drug price comparisons should be made against the real price, the 40% discount price, and not the retail prices charged in these countries. Finally, some due diligence should be exercised and the price data from large drug cartels in European countries should be independently verified to determine for sure whether or not the prices are accurate.

My bill will basically restore competition and perhaps encourage the PMPRB to do the job it was supposed to do at the outset.

The Liberals opposite have said that they will work within the system, will go to the industry committee meeting and will fire tough questions at large multinationals written by the Minister of Industry, the Minister of Health and their colleagues to make drug companies look good.

Working within that system has not really paid off. There have been no tangible results. I say this with some sympathy for colleagues in the Liberal government who faithfully toiled away in the industry committee last year on Bill C-91. They lobbied their caucus and they lobbied their Minister of Industry. They had every expectation that some minimal response would be provided. As we know, nothing actually happened. The Liberal government was able to slide into another election because the review was being done until the election call last spring.

What reward did they get for this? The biggest defender of the large multinationals, the chair of the industry committee, David Walker, got his reward. He was defeated by my colleague, the NDP member for Winnipeg Centre, for all the great work he did misleading the people of his constituency and not doing his job to stand up for the public interest when it came to price gouging by large multinational drug companies.

What about those who did not get defeated? Not very many of those who supported the drug companies were not defeated by an NDPer. They simply got humiliated by the cabinet's complete capitulation to the multinational drug companies just last month.

I argue that the only way to fix Bill C-91 is to scrap it and to support Bill C-248. That is why I am asking for support of the bill. It will make some definite changes, bring competition to drug pricing and help those who need it most.

Large foreign drug companies wanted 20 years of market exclusivity on new drugs for four reasons. First, they said it would create jobs. In fact there are 2,000 fewer people working in our pharmaceutical industry as a result.

Second, they said that it would keep drugs affordable. In fact costs for brand name drugs have skyrocketed since 1987, forcing provincial government drug plans to pass on more of the cost to the sick and elderly.

Saskatchewan is the best example. It has been unable to defend its citizens who require prescription drugs to maintain their health because of skyrocketing costs of brand name drugs and the exclusion of generic companies from manufacturing competitively priced drugs for those who require them.

It has also driven the cost of medicare extremely high. Prior to 1987 prescription drugs accounted for less than 8% of Canada's medicare costs and now it is over 12%, a 50% increase in medicare costs for prescription drug purchases alone.

The third idea they put forward to allow Bill C-91 to pass was to generate funds for research. Although most research money is spent on company directed clinical trials that are required by law anyway, only one new breakthrough drug has been developed in Canada since 1987, the AIDS drug 3TC. Even now it is being manufactured in Ireland. How many jobs did that create in Canada? Probably none but maybe one or two to sell it.

A commitment by large foreign drug companies to help fund pure research through the Medical Research Council was scaled back and still remains unmet. The shortfall in the MRC's budget is having drastic consequences for Canadian medical scientists.

To use the R and D pitch by the drug pharmaceuticals in Saskatchewan as an example, there were approximately 123 requests for clinical drug trials in Saskatchewan. The international pharmaceuticals approved none of the 123 requests, not one. Yet they are travelling from province to province claiming to be spending billions and trillions of dollars on more and more R and D. It is all a big lie by the pharmaceuticals.

Fourth, they said they needed Bill C-91 and could not change its provisions because of international trade obligations under the WTO. Members of the House who sat on the industry committee will recall that witness after witness, including international economic advisers and lawyers, appeared and said that the WTO permitted member countries to pass laws to seek to protect the public interest.

If the public interest is being gouged by large pharmaceuticals or any other company unfairly, any government can take the decision under this clause to protect its public from unfair pricing practices. The government does not want to do that because it would jeopardize its contributions from companies like Glaxo Wellcome which gave the Liberals $90,000 in contributions. Another pharmaceutical, Merck Frosst, gave the Liberals about $16,000 to help buy this protection under Bill C-91 and not to support a bill like Bill C-248 which I am putting forward in the House today.

It is clear the policy has not worked for the Liberals. The Liberals in opposition agreed with abolishing Bill C-91. Their critic, Ron MacDonald, the former member for Dartmouth, would not even run in the last election because he was so embarrassed by the flip-flop of the Liberal Party. The Prime Minister stood in the House as leader of the opposition under the Mulroney government and said “The Prime Minister of Canada always sides with the multinationals and not the sick and poor. When are you going to repeal Bill C-91?”

Now that the former leader of the opposition is Prime Minister of Canada, he should look in the mirror and ask the same question. Perhaps he should answer it by taking some initiative to help people who are suffering under unfair prescription drug pricing practices by multinational companies.

Today bankruptcy statistics were announced: 91,000 personal and business tragedies, a record number in the country.

This is something, in my view, that is going to hurt those families even more when they require prescription drugs to maintain their health.

The Liberals were persuaded very unanimously by their lobbyist, Judy Erola, the chief lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association of Canada. Judy Erola is very persuasive because she is a former Liberal cabinet minister under Prime Minister Trudeau. They bought this line of sustaining Bill C-91 hook, line and sinker.

The cost and benefits of the current government policy on patent drugs does not add up. I challenge parliamentarians in this House to say that the emperor has no clothes and that the process that we have under Bill C-91 does not work. If we do not fix it soon the future of medicare is on the line and certainly the lives and future of all Canadians.

[Bankruptcies, February 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.

Statistics Canada today announced nearly 91,000 business and personal bankruptcies, a record level of human tragedy. These bankruptcies demonstrate the failure of the Liberals' policies to help these people who are struggling to make ends meet.

How can the minister justify this tragedy and what hope can the minister give to these people who in record numbers have lost their savings, their homes and their dreams?

[Canada Labour Code, February 19th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member of the Reform Party has referred to my colleague from Winnipeg Centre as a lawyer and the record should show that my colleague is not a lawyer, he is a carpenter.