Dan McTeague

[Patent Act, June 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I was very pleased to hear the intervention of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre. I know it is an issue that she has spoken passionately about in the past.

I too have taken a great interest in the issue of drug patents, going back all the way to my candidacy in 1992 when I was first elected as a Liberal candidate. It was a big issue in my riding. The hon. member will know that I have no generics in my riding. However, I do have two brand name manufacturers.

The issue, however, has not garnered a lot of attention outside of the few members of parliament who have talked about it, including the member for Eglinton—Lawrence, who has also stood shoulder to shoulder with me on this issue over the past several years. It came as a bit of a surprise to see in the Hill Times a headline that suggests something very different from what I suggested in terms of the interview. I want to apologize to members for that. It is simply important for me to illustrate that the headline, which I had no control over, had nothing to do with the comments I made.

More important, though, is the question I have for the hon. member. The motion I brought into committee dealt with the question of the automatic injunction, which gives the effect of extending drug patents well beyond the 20 year patent regime. The hon. member also knows that when new drug prices are brought forward Canada is related to the other seven nations, the top nations that have the privilege of having a warehouse or head office in their own countries. We also know that when we talk about R and D, the $900 million, much of it is for advertising.

I would like to ask the hon. member if she would comment on some of the methodologies of the PMPRB, which tend to give a very distorted view of what Canadians are actually paying when it comes to high drug costs, and on the overall implications for Canada's number one concern, the health care system.

[Proceeds Of Crime (Money Laundering) Act, June 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, for greater clarity I want to ensure that I was recorded as voting with the government on this bill, as well as subsequent bills.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

[Patent Act, June 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I wish not to have my vote recorded on this particular motion.

[Patent Act, May 10th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I was interested in the member's comments about trying to find the balance between consumers and patents as well as the need to ensure that Canada remains competitive globally from the perspective and interest of intellectual property.

I too am somewhat confounded by how we have changed over the past few years. I was also interested to hear many of the comments made by his Conservative colleagues in the Senate who also have demonstrated a rather interesting perspective that is far different from the enthusiasm that was expressed by his party and his colleagues. Perhaps they are more sensitive now because of their age, being at the point where they may have to use some of these therapies and drugs.

Since the hon. member will be sitting on the industry committee with me, will he take some of those enlightening comments from his Senate colleagues to the committee? His Conservative colleagues in the Senate have sent a number of caution flags, particularly in the area of infringement.

Infringement goes well beyond Canada's obligations to the WTO and beyond the question of honouring a lengthy drug patent regime that is competitive by any international standard. Will he speak in the industry committee and in the House about the need to ensure that evidence brought forward on the basis of a claim of infringement be not based on any prima facie evidence that has to be brought before court? Will the hon. member raise that issue and try to advocate it? The opportunity to do that is now with Bill S-17.

[Patent Act, May 10th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to take part in this debate lately. I was at the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, which is studying other issues. It will be impossible for me to make a long speech, of course, but I have a few questions for my colleague from Winnipeg—Transcona.

I understand the frustration of the member. Of course the member will remember my work, not only in the House of Commons as a member who was elected in 1993, but also my role in 1995 on the Standing Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations when I single-handedly attempted to bring down the notice of compliance, which was not part and parcel of what the House of Commons had voted for, and the manner in which the industry committee had treated it in 1992 when we were dealing with Bill C-91.

I cannot very well go back and change what has occurred, but I would like to ask two specific questions of the member on where I believe the House of Commons can act with some force and decisiveness.

First, I will deal with the supreme court decision of 1998 which dealt with patented medicines and notice of compliance regulations. In that decision Justice Iacobucci said that section 55 of the Patent Act, which allows drug companies to claim an infringement and effectively maintain a 20 year patent period before allowing generic companies to make cheaper copies of new drugs, has been a question of contention.

The hon. justice suggested that

It would be manifestly unjust to subject generic producers to such a draconian regime without at least permitting them to protect themselves by reducing the length of the injunction and initiating the NOC process as early as possible.

I would like to hear the comments of the hon. member. This is an issue we can address and it is certainly on the table in terms of the bill. We know why Bill S-17 was concocted with respect to WTO.

Second, and the hon. member has touched on it with respect to South Africa, does he see an opportunity here for the government, in concert with parliamentarians, to allow a return to compulsory licensing to address the AIDS pandemic in Africa and other places around the world? More specifically, could the government, guided by CIDA, allow a return to compulsory licensing in order to bring down drug costs? That would be the Canadian way.

[Competition Act, May 3rd, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak about this bill and about the new ground broken in terms of recognizing members' efforts to ensure that the legislation that comes before this parliament and its committees is an accurate reflection of the concerns we hear about in our ridings.

I have a lot to say on the bill and will try to be as brief as I can in the next nine and a half minutes. Much of the bill reflects the efforts of members on this side of the House to effect much needed changes to the Competition Act. It is for that reason that I thank the hon. Minister of Industry, his parliamentary secretary, the member for Scarborough Centre and the competition bureau that have been working very hard to ensure the Competition Act reflects the changes in market structure that we see throughout the country.

I will give a bit of background on why we are here today. The hon. member for Kelowna said earlier that it is a beautiful day. I think it is a wonderful day. There is finally a ray of hope that our competition policy will begin to look more globalist, will be open to small and large players, and will ultimately have more teeth.

In 1997 when gas prices were heading up, 52 members on this side of the House began a study of the industry, particularly at the retailing end, and found the level of concentration to be alarming.

For that reason one of the recommendations was to ensure that a more appropriate definition of predatory pricing be established. The House not only made private member's Bill C-235 votable. It also ensured that it would be properly studied by committee.

That clearly was not the case. Nevertheless, out of that came a more open process that allowed a number of issues to be studied, not just one area of competition policy. One such issue was that section 45 of the Competition Act, the conspiracy section, may not be relevant in addressing problems in the economy or in ensuring that strategic alliances which may look collusive but have very strong competitive effects are somehow segregated from the egregious types of collusion.

As for the issue of predatory pricing, a move was made with the help of the industry committee to review some of the criminal aspects which are difficult to enforce if not to detect. With the help of VanDuzer and Paquet we were able to propose changes to the Competition Act which would make it more user friendly and make criminal burdens of proof civilly reviewable.

We followed that up with a commitment by the previous Minister of Industry, the current Minister of Foreign Affairs, who must be acknowledged here. He began allowing the public policy forum to conduct a broad study of the Competition Act, particularly in terms of some of the legislation I brought forward.

I commend my two colleagues who spoke before me, the member for Kitchener Centre and my colleague from Mount Royal who brought forward the bill dealing with international co-operation. The public policy forum effectively criss-crossed the country last summer to determine the public's concern with respect to abusive dominance in the grocery industry and retail domination in almost any form.

The second recommendation dealt with private access, conspiracy, collusion and summary disposition of temporary orders which we see rolled up in the bill today. The package received a significant amount of interest. Most alarming, however, was the consistent pattern we saw among those with vested interests, particularly powerful lobbies that constituted themselves as a diversity of individuals but were really part of the same group that opposed almost any changes to the Competition Act.

Last week I explained who wrote the Competition Act in 1986. There are not only concerns that it is an act whose time has come in terms of need for change. There are questions as to who really wrote it. Most of us in the House know, as Peter C. Newman said in the book Titans and in his interview with the chairman of the Business Council on National Issues, that it is interesting Canada is the only nation that has allowed its Competition Act to be written by the very people it was meant to police.

That has set off alarm bells in most circles and certainly in the House of Commons. However more important is the impact it has had on the competitive process. For that reason the competition bureau, in concert with the minister and with parliament, has taken a bold step today in saying that irrespective of what the interests are we must make sure the competitive process is honoured and that it flourishes.

Opportunities have been made clear on several occasions in the industry committee. People have testified to the committee suggesting that by the time the competition bureau makes a ruling the person it affects is out of business, the damage is done and it is irreparable. The initiatives taken today are extremely valuable and should ensure there is an ongoing process for amendments to the Competition Act to ensure that it is pragmatic and changes with changing times.

I want to make sure the House understands that the process before us today must be an open one. The government has initiated, through the wisdom of the minister, an opportunity that would allow members of parliament to ensure that issues of importance to them and to consumers have a voice on the floor of the House of Commons.

Many members are talking about one of the bills. My colleague from Kitchener Centre addressed the question of deceptive practices, particularly as transmitted through mail by using Canada Post or other means.

That is an extremely important issue with which the public readily identifies. However there are other issues the public may not have seen. Another initiative taken up here today is the whole question of international co-operation. Why is that important? Most Canadians do not know it, but for the past several years we have been part and parcel of a cartel that has forced up the price of citric acid, various important chemicals, certain vitamins and lycene.

Those issues were resolved, discovered, advocated and taken from the competition act in the U.S. For that reason it is important to ensure that where there are international cartels Canada can effectively prosecute no matter where it occurs in the world.

It is interesting that the competition bureau was successful in prosecuting these issues and bringing revenue back to Canada. That revenue, according to some, did not equal what the public lost in terms of higher prices, but it nonetheless helped the general revenues.

I will also point out something that is not in the bill but which the industry committee has nonetheless been effective in transmitting to parliament. I am talking about the need to ensure the competition bureau has the resources to carry out its very lofty mandate and to ensure the market remains balanced.

Questions are being raised in many areas. There is an opportunity for such questions to be addressed in the industry committee. I caution hon. members that the pinstripes and the big suits will be coming to the committee. I implore members of parliament to ensure a balance of the views of consumers and ordinary people out there who do not have a voice but who nonetheless are an important part of our economic structure. Those individuals count for everything in the economy and must count for something if the legislation is to be meaningful and successful.

Members of parliament will be lobbied by some of the most interesting people in the country. Members will need to decide for themselves, in committee and on the floor of the House of Commons, whether to enhance and maintain the competitive process for all Canadians or merely for those who happen to have the wealth and the power to influence them.

This is a very good day. There are obviously a number of concerns we must address. It is the beginning of a much larger process. It is vindication for a lot of the work I have done and which I have brought to the attention of the House of Commons and on which other hon. members have worked so diligently. Let us ensure that Canada remains ahead of the game, that its international reputation as a place for doing business remains pristine, and that Canadians benefit from a vibrant economic environment in which all people are meaningful participants and are treated as equals.

[Chernobyl, April 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, today marks the 15th anniversary of the worst nuclear accident in the world's history.

This is a day to remember the horror unleashed on the people of Chernobyl and the valiant efforts of the radiation containment crews, many paying with their lives in the fight to save others.

The tragic human cost from the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 is still being felt. Fifteen years later people are still suffering from diseases caused by radiation.

The impact of the disaster was felt not only in Ukraine alone. As radioactive clouds do not recognize international boundaries, there were obviously impacts.

I commend the efforts of one Canadian organization that provides assistance to children in neighbouring Belarus, children who are growing up in an area that received 70% of the fallout from the explosion.

Since 1991, the Canadian Relief Fund for Chernobyl Victims in Belarus has been bringing children to Canada for health respite visits. In the last four years, this organization has enabled over 1,600 children to spend some time away from places that still contain contamination and the vivid reminders of the immense price to be paid for nuclear miscalculation.

[Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization And Divestiture Act, April 25th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I need no lesson from the hon. member when it comes to speaking out against my own party. I know the hon. member has quite a degree of interest in that area.

I want to point out to the hon. member that there are many countries in this world that have those kind of resources. Russia would be a good example of where it cannot get the investment to get the resources. Sure, it may belong to the people, but ultimately the people will never see the benefit of those resources because they will remain in the ground ad infinitum with that kind of a socialist policy, which we understand to mean not recognizing the market as it currently exists.

I want to tell the hon. member that I am prepared to exhaust the free market and make sure it works appropriately before we have some kind of a command system.

The hon. member had a class example of why gasoline prices are expensive in his own riding. The Atlantic Richfield Company came into his riding, knocked out a few independents, had prices below cost, even below the level of taxation, and the hon. member never once raised the issue. The independents are out of the way and British Columbians in his riding are now paying among the highest prices for gasoline in this country.

When it comes to my position as it relates to gasoline, I would ask the hon. member to once and for all take up this issue, tell his constituents why he did not talk about this and explain to them specifically what international policy or international conspiracy has to do—

[Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization And Divestiture Act, April 25th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, those are very excellent questions. I want to explain to the hon. member that although I and many members on the committee held much promise that the conference board would do a thorough and independent job, it became apparent to us that much of its methodologies were in fact wrong and flawed. For instance, it compared that wholesale market that I was talking about, the refinery level, to 1% of the U.S. market, mostly the market of Plattsburgh and Buffalo, New York, which of course are trailers to the Toronto and Montreal markets. There was an asymmetry in terms of comparison. The board was literally comparing watermelons to apples, with the apples in the U.S. following the situation here in Canada.

However, if the board had taken the whole of the United States and compared it to the whole of Canada it would have found, as I and many others have discovered in any objective review, that the two are very different. In the U.S., in many respects, one will find that its refineries do not even sell gasoline at retail so there is real vibrant competition at the wholesale level.

The second part of the hon. member's question was a very good one. It dealt with the question of why investigations have not turned up conspiracy collusion. I want hon. members to really understand this. Collusion is not illegal in Canada. The burden of proof to discover collusion and price fixing under section 45 requires not only the establishment of the fact that it has happened and not only the intent of the individual, but that it had an undue impact or an undue standard on the market.

Can anyone believe this? Our Competition Act is similar to someone going in, knocking over a bank, having the intent to knock it over, carrying it out, pistol-whipping whoever is there but not being proven as having committed a criminal act unless the effect of their act is to bring about the collapse of the Canadian monetary system. It means it is a burden of proof not beyond reasonable doubt but a burden of proof that can never be proven.

The hon. member would probably have the chairman of Imperial Oil, Shell or any of those companies, which I am sure they would not do nor should they do, come before the Supreme Court of Canada and swear under oath that they had committed a conspiracy and of course done that by way of affidavit. Therefore the problem is with the Competition Act.

Again, I beg the hon. member and all hon. members in the House to remind themselves who wrote the Competition Act in 1985. If they do not like the way it was written and they do not like the high, unjustified costs of energy that have been fleecing Canadians, then I beg them to ignore the fact that the media has locked the issue down and to start discussing it because their constituents are doing it.

[Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization And Divestiture Act, April 25th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre and I have had a few discussions about this and I thank him for his very kind remarks about my very cursory knowledge of the industry.

I say to the hon. member that I believe all options in terms of the free market should be available to the industry, as others, before we look at the issue of government intervention. I think that intervention by government should be of necessity.

My argument, in very plain words, is that there is a deficiency in the free market as it relates to oil and gas. For anybody to tack on 18 cents a litre as a margin at the refinery when competitors to the south are operating at substantially less, demonstrates to me that if I thought, given that 35 billion litres of gasoline is being sold every year, the opportunity of potentially making $300 million, to $500 million would invite new entrants in the marketplace, that would be the first indication that the free market is non-existent here.

I also believe that our Competition Act needs teeth. This may come as a surprise to some hon. members, but the Competition Act was written in 1985 by groups represented very heavily by big oil. It was one of the reasons I brought in my bill which would remove the efficiencies defence or excuse in which, if one can believe it, a company, if it could demonstrate that it was acting in a merger which could have competitive, harmful effects, could proceed with the merger as long as it could demonstrate efficiency. We have two players in the case of propane. This was evident in terms of what happened in August. Superior bought out ICG.

Superior went to the competition tribunal because of course the bureaucrats said that Superior would have 100% control of the energy market. They said that it would be competitively harmful and that it would have a negative impact on consumers.

The tribunal, in a two to one decision, said that notwithstanding the fact that it would hurt consumers, the competitive process and ultimately the free market, the fact that one company can buy out the other and shut it down is a form of economic efficiency. That defence was put in specifically in 1985 so that we would wind up in a situation where there was a Competition Act that looked a lot more like a concentration or monopolization of the Canada Act. I think we need to look at the economic instruments, such as the Competition Act, to ensure that there is fair play.

I could talk to the hon. member about independents that have lost their shirts because they were too good for the obvious reasons that I mentioned. Cross-subsidization does occur but it should be illegal. It is illegal in the United States.

If shareholders knew that oil companies were engaging in the practice of losing money at the retail level while saving a lot of money at the wholesale level to discipline their competitors who rely on them for supply, they would walk away in droves saying that those companies were not making proper economic decisions and that the government was not paying attention to the fact that this was obviously anti-competitive and obviously wrong.