moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider repealing the Patent Act Amendment Act, Chapter 2, Statutes of Canada, 1993, to make prescription drugs more affordable to Canadians and to encourage the creation of jobs in Canada by generic drug companies.
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure this afternoon to move this motion in the House of Commons. Bill C-91 in essence ended Canada's compulsory drug licensing system in place since 1969 which helped make medicines more affordable.
Bill C-91 increased patent protection for the large multinational pharmaceutical corporations. What that means is that those drug companies were able to extend the monopoly pricing for periods of up to 20 years for their prescription drugs. Canadians are deeply concerned about the consequences of this bill. What Bill C-91 has done is increase the cost of some prescription drugs by about 120 per cent in the past three years.
As a result of this bill, for example, the Saskatchewan drug plan, a government funded plan, has had to diminish its coverage for Saskatchewan citizens quite significantly but still pays about $10 million more a year for the plan because of increased prescription drug prices.
The boost in the cost of provincial drug programs ultimately means you pay more for drugs and increases Canada's dependence on the most powerful pharmaceutical companies. Bill C-91 also weakens Canadians generic drug companies at the expense of foreign multinational pharmaceuticals. It also sharply deteriorates our own pharmaceutical trade balance, making Canada a warehouse for drug imports. The biggest impact is on the consumer, in particular those people who require prescription drugs, the sick, the elderly, people from all walks of life.
The Eastman committee which studied drug patents and costs in 1983 claimed that across Canada at that time the public saved $211 million per year in drug costs from generics. In 1986 the Canadian Drug Manufacturers Association, which is the organization of companies that manufacture generic drugs in Canada, estimated that compulsory licensing saved us about $500 million a year.
We do not have an updated figure but for health care plans in this country which total about $70 billion in costs to the government the components of the pharmaceuticals in that $70 billion cost is about 17 per cent, which means it costs Canadians abut $13 billion or $14 billion a year. Estimates today indicate that we would be saving between $1 billion and $2 billion a year if Bill C-91 did not exist.
Not only do we save on the generic price but whenever a generic equivalent is introduced to the market the brand name product falls about 20 per cent to compete with it.
The Eastman committee at that time recommended a maximum monopoly of four years. The government legislated seven years for some drugs and ten years for others. Someone from the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs said we did not give them a nickel more than they asked for. Now it is not just seven years or ten years or even seventeen, but Bill C-91 gives these pharmaceuticals 20 years of protection.
There is a well know drug, an antibiotic, that is marketed as Septra by a company called Burroughs Wellcome and there is Bactrim by another company called Hoffmann-La Roche. This medicine is composed of two constituents that work together to produce their effects in the urinary tract and in the respiratory system.
One of these components is owned by the British drug company Burroughs Wellcome and the other component is owned by Hofmann-La Roche of Switzerland.
Not only do the components work symbiotically, so do the companies. Wellcome makes enough of its product to supply its own needs and that of the Roche company while the Roche company makes sufficient of its own product to supply itself and Burroughs Wellcome.
Then each company advertises its own product as superior to that of the opposite company and will produce research material to even prove it. Yet the only difference is that the one company markets this tablet in green and the other is coloured white. There is a slight difference in shape but they both contain the identical amounts of the same two drugs that came from the same two companies. They come from the same machinery in the same factories. Not only that, but they each thereafter supply these components to generic drug companies who could produce them under compulsory licensing at a cheaper rate and then these pharmaceuticals have the cheek to call themselves ethical pharmaceutical manufacturers.
An article in the Globe and Mail of January 20, 1993 cites the chairman of a company that administers many private drug benefit plans in Ontario. He told the Senate committee investigating this matter that the average cost of a prescription drug in Ontario in 1987 was $12.52. Five years later it was $21.12, an increase of 75 per cent over five years for the average prescription drug. He projected that by the year 2000, six short years away, the average would be about $34.
Of course the federal government's rationale for C-91 was that great big bogeyman GATT, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. Bill C-91 was retroactive to three years prior to the GATT's being implemented before it took effect. My concern is why should Canada have internal matters decided by foreign governments?
As a matter of fact, Canadian drug manufacturers have indicated in their research that under the present Patent Act Canadian generic pharmaceutical manufacturers are prohibited from producing for export products that are under patent in Canada, even if the product is not under patent in the country we wish to export to.
For example, given that many patents are granted in the United States before they are granted in Canada, patents will expire in the U.S. before they expire in Canada. The Canadian generic pharmaceutical industry must now locate manufacturing facilities in the U.S. when a patent expires there before it expires in Canada.
This means we cannot continue to create jobs and produce our export products here in Canada. In effect we are being forced to export Canadian investment and jobs which we prefer to locate right here. Unless this problem is quickly rectified we will be forced to curtail more jobs in Canada and invest and create jobs in the U.S., Mexico and other export markets.
The repeal of Bill C-91 would demonstrate to Canadians that the Canadian government still has control over its domestic affairs rather than the multinational foreign drug manufacturers. If this bill is not repealed it will prove once again to Canadians that the Liberals are no different than the Conservatives.
We have often heard in many jurisdictions in this country the phrase "Liberal, Tory, same old story".
My sense of it is that unless the Liberals who voted in opposition against Bill C-91 repeal this legislation they will be no better than their sisters, the Conservative Party. I think actions speak louder than words. It is incumbent upon the Liberal government to take action on this bill and repeal it so that we can save a whole lot of jobs and a whole lot of money for our drug plans and for Canadian consumers in the end.
When the Tories passed the drug patent legislation, Bill C-91, New Democrats predicted it was a prescription for problems. The legislation gave brand name drug companies a 20 year monopoly to charge basically whatever they wanted for prescription drugs. New Democrats said that the granting of generic drug licences would be eliminated and that consumers would bear the brunt of decreased competition and increased prices. Without competition big name pharmaceutical companies would be able to set the price of being healthy.
According to a 1986 Ontario report on drug competition when five versions of the same drug were on the market the cheapest generic drug was almost half the price of the original. Since Bill C-91 was passed this type of saving to the consumer is a thing of the past.
I have here some brand name-generic price comparisons for the top 25 genericized products. For example, for the drug Cimetidine which is an ulcer drug-that is the drug name, the brand name is Tagamet-the generic price is about 80 per cent less expensive than the original brand name. We are actually paying 80 per cent more for the brand name of a drug which produces the same ultimate result.
For Naproxen which is an arthritis drug, the brand name of which is Naprosyn, the per cent savings if we use a generic is about 76 per cent. There is a whole list of examples. Every one of these examples is at least 15 per cent cheaper, and in many cases up to 80 per cent cheaper by using generics.
What we can conclude from this is that the consumers in Canada are being gouged by Bill C-91 which allows the pharmaceutical corporations to gouge consumers. New Democrats in this country, New Democrats in this House of Commons, oppose this kind of gouging of consumers.
Even provincial drug plans will not be able to shield Canadians from the high cost of being healthy. Cash strapped provinces will be forced to delete more and more drugs from the list of the products they pay for, creating a situation like that in the U.S. where people are dying because they cannot afford brand name drugs and they do not have an option to purchase generic drugs.
Saskatchewan was convinced that Bill C-91 was a severe blow to health care in Saskatchewan. At that time it estimated it would cost its drug plan between $6 million and $10 million more each year. Not only has it proven to cost $10 million a year more, but it has had to reduce the coverage because of the massive increases in drugs.
The Tories argument in favour of Bill C-91 is that without patent protection Canada is in danger of losing research and development investments. In support of this claim Judy Erola, former Liberal Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and president of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of Canada, resorted to using blackmail as a rallying cry. She claimed that the brand name industry would pass us by if patent protection was not extended. While Bill C-91 is in effect the promised drug jobs have not materialized and in fact layoffs have occurred.
As recently as April 26, 1994 in the Globe and Mail it was stated: ``Earlier this month Eli Lilly Canada Inc. of Toronto scrapped a plan to add 150 manufacturing jobs and a major expansion first announced at the time of C-91's passage. The company says it still plans to pump more money into R and D but shelved the $170 million expansion because of cuts dictated by its U.S. parent, the Eli Lilly Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota''.
Here is one of many examples of this wonderful Bill C-91 falling short from every single promise that was ever made by the former government.
The problem with the arguments put forward by Ms. Erola is that the drug companies are not legally obligated to use their increased profits to conduct research and create jobs in Canada and past experience points to the contrary. When Bill C-22 was passed by the Tories in 1987 the same promises were made. However, Stats Canada figures show that only 500 new research jobs were created and these were offset by more than 1,000 jobs lost in drug manufacturing. In addition, Canada has no large drug companies with basic research facilities headquartered here.
We have some very serious problems in our health care program in Canada. We have increased prices in drugs which have skyrocketed since the implementation of Bill C-91. I have chosen this motion because it is important not just to me but to millions of Canadians.
I have presented in this House petitions from thousands of people who are opposed to Bill C-91 and want generic drug companies to produce lower cost drugs for their use in terms of addressing their health problems. I have letters from a number of organizations. I want to read one into the record. This was sent to me by Mr. F.J. Lancaster, the immediate past national president of the Federal Superannuates National Association, which represent about 70,000 retired federal civil servants in its 74 branches across the country. He says regarding Bill C-91: "It is insidious legislation and more so because one 10-year extension of patent rights on new drugs had already been granted, I believe in the 1970s, and Bill C-91 was a further sellout to the international drug companies. The costs of prescription drugs have risen dramatically. That is hurting the poor and aged on small incomes and causing some provincial government medical plans to virtually remove from their health care plans benefits related to prescription drugs because the plans cannot afford the coverage".
He continues: "As a result, the users of prescription drugs have had to assume an additional and very heavy financial burden. While our organization is strictly non-partisan, we will fight the government of the day on any legislation inimical to our interests and we will support the efforts of any of our parliamentary representatives who oppose such type of legislation". He represents 70,000 superannuates.
I received a number of letters, one addressed to the Prime Minister from one of my constituents, urging the government to immediately review Bill C-91. This was dated January 5, 1994. I have not yet heard whether the Prime Minister responded. I am sure he responded to this constituent. These are examples of people across the country who are concerned.
Another example is on April 5, 1994 a motion was passed in the Saskatchewan legislature, the province that I represent in this House of Commons, which was unanimously supported that read as follows: "That this assembly urge the federal government to repeal Bill C-91 because it provides excessive profits to foreign drug companies, causes severe financial hardships to prescription drug users, particularly the elderly, and makes provincial drug plans economically impossible".
The entire legislature, which is composed of 54 New Democrats, 3 Liberals and 10 Conservatives, supported this motion unanimously.
Not only is this evidence I provided important, but a poll taken recently conducted with about 1,100 Canadians was done by Insight Canada Research for the Canadian Drug Manufacturers Association. In this poll they found that 63 per cent of Canadian respondents are concerned about the high price of prescription drugs. Seventy-nine per cent of those people reside in Quebec. They say that 79 per cent of the Quebec population are concerned about it, 71 per cent of the population in the prairies are concerned about it and 77 per cent in Atlantic Canada. It also found that 75 per cent of Canadians believe the federal government should control the price of prescription drugs. Eighty-seven per cent of Quebecers believe the federal government should control the price of prescription drugs. They believe they are too high.
I was curious to note in the House of Commons during Question Period today the Bloc Quebecois member who stood up and said: "We oppose repealing Bill C-91. We want to see this bill protected and actually enhanced and strengthened". They believe it is a good bill. That is not surprising because
when they were in the previous Parliament they supported this legislation.
What I cannot find a rationale for is that they really are supporting the international pharmaceutical corporations at the expense of gouging their own Quebec French Canadian consumer. They have in essence betrayed their own people. They got elected on a policy of so-called social democracy and the first opportunity they have to protect their people, they knife them in the gut. I think it is disgusting. All I can say is shame on them for that kind of performance and that kind of stand on this very, very important issue.
Bill C-91 is a threat to medicare, it is a threat to our Canadian generic drug manufacturers, it is a threat to consumers of prescription drugs. Bill C-91 is a threat to our provincial drug plans and it is a threat to the sick and the elderly.
It helps no one except the large multinational corporations. It does not help anybody else in this country. That is why I believe the government of the day has to support this.
I might say that in the previous Parliament many members opposite who are now in government, including the Prime Minister of Canada and the Minister of Health, opposed Bill C-91. I am asking them in their positions in cabinet and controlling the government to follow their instincts and their position in the previous Parliament and to repeal Bill C-91.
I end by saying that I was very pleased to hear from many members of Parliament who support this motion, including the member for the riding of Ontario and, of course, the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
I know my time has ended. I reiterate by saying that I am urging the federal government to repeal Bill C-91 for the sake of our social programs, for the sake of medicare, for the sake of the sick and the elderly in our country.
