Industry committee  I think we made most of our points in our opening remarks or in answering questions. I would like to ask the committee to focus on the suggestions we have for looking at the patented medicine notice of compliance regulations. They are unique to pharmaceuticals. They block a gene

Industry committee  The prices in Canada have come down dramatically over the last five years. We are a regulated market at the provincial level. I'll use Ontario as an example since it's the largest. It used to regulate generics effectively at 63% of the brand name price. That was until 2008. In

Industry committee  If the medication is new, novel, useful, an improvement, we would support the patenting of it.

Industry committee  I think they're both in the same therapeutic class. What we found was the sales of Lipitor decreased dramatically and the sales of Crestor increased dramatically after Lipitor went off patent, indicating that there was something happening in the marketplace beyond an improvement

Industry committee  They're not exact replicas, but they are both in the same therapeutic class.

Industry committee  They're substantially the same. They treat the same illnesses, yes.

Industry committee  They're both statin products.

Industry committee  I'm not sure I made that specific point, but there is some overlap. One of our member companies, Sandoz, is part of the Novartis family, which is a brand name pharmaceutical company. Some of our companies have arms that also do research into new products, so there is some overlap

Industry committee  When patents expire and generics come on the market, I think you would find that in virtually all pharmacies in Canada, the generic would be available to the patient. I will use an example in the area of cholesterol. A drug called Lipitor came off patent and instead of generic

Industry committee  I can start. Before I do, there has been a slight implication that Canada is free-riding in the pharmaceutical sector. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have a very strong patent regime, a very strong data exclusivity regime. We provide eight years of data protection

Industry committee  The first thing I would say is that we are a trading industry. We absolutely depend on trade. We want free trade. We support free trade. Some of the proposals on the table on pharmaceutical IP are going to restrict trade and restrict our access to foreign markets that are absolu

Industry committee  With regard to the generic pharmaceutical industry, Quebec is an attractive market. We have major plants in Montreal, specifically Pharmascience, which is the largest pharmaceutical manufacturer in Quebec. Our industry continues to invest in that province. The problem you referr

Industry committee  Yes, many of our companies have patents on manufacturing methods, for instance. One of the attributes of the generic pharmaceutical industry is that they are very efficient at manufacturing and distributing large numbers of products. Our large companies could be making 300, 400,

Industry committee  Could I ask you to repeat the last part, please?

Industry committee  All right. Thank you.