International Trade committee  In general, we're doing some of the right things. As you know, we have the USMCA or CUSMA being renewed. Specifically in the pharmaceutical space, we have made some changes in both the USMCA and CETA that have brought us more into line. I think we probably have more to do in tha

International Trade committee  I can take a shot at it if you want. Medicago is a joint venture of a Japanese company and a British company. I know people keep calling it a Quebec company, but that's what it is. Its largest facility was in North Carolina until this began. I think to the extent you can get pe

International Trade committee  I think that's one of the really tough questions here. The vaccines that have really succeeded are these mRNA vaccines. The world is really not so much in a race for vaccines at this point; we're in a race for lipid nanoparticles, which were developed by a Vancouver firm but are

International Trade committee  As I said before, it started out that companies were giving their drugs away for, in our case, a dollar a day. Then at some point they got to a comfort level that there wasn't as much diversion as they were fearing back into the developed world, to be honest. We could then licens

International Trade committee  I'm afraid I think it is pie in the sky, to be honest. We saw that as the pandemic was crossing the whole world, it became every person for themselves very quickly. When COVAX was originally designed, the idea was that everybody was supposed to buy their vaccines through COVAX.

International Trade committee  Not really. I think the reality for a country like Canada is that it's very hard to put Canada on an exemption list like that if you're the European Union. Once you put Canada on it, you have to do the same for a lot of other countries, so I can understand why they would want to

International Trade committee  I do agree with that assertion. I think it is a real problem in the early stages of where we are, as I said before. At this stage of where we are with the vaccines that are working, which are completely state of the art, and given the real difficulties we've seen these companies

International Trade committee  Thank you for asking that question. It was one of the things I wanted to address and I had forgotten to. I read the remarks of Mr. Lipkus. He made a comment about how if we were to exercise the waiver, we would potentially face problems under other existing trade agreements like

International Trade committee  Look, the issue—the 100-pound gorilla or whatever the expression is—for Canada and the pharmaceutical industry is the perception that we don't respect intellectual property rights. You could dance around it a million ways, but if you start with compulsory licensing, especially a

International Trade committee  There are two separate issues that I think are important to keep in mind. One is that within the existing WTO TRIPS agreement, there is an exception that allows countries to do compulsory licensing. That's why we have that as a function of our law. South Africa and India could i

International Trade committee  I don't think it would be to the benefit of Canadian manufacturers to do that right now, because if you want to get the big companies into Canada to start investing in a big way, it all comes back to respect for their intellectual property. There's a tension there. I'm not again

International Trade committee  Canada tried to use it before, in the old context. The reason it didn't work at that time is that voluntary licensing was already occurring with people like my client. There was no way that anybody in Canada was going to produce it more cheaply than what we licensed Aspen to do i

International Trade committee  Those were voluntary licences. The starting point was that companies made the decision that they wanted to give the drugs away to get them to the people who needed them quickly. Those are what we call access programs. Some of them were supported by the Clinton Foundation and PEP

International Trade committee  I think we made a choice in the 1970s to promote a generic pharmaceutical industry. It's a choice that has an obvious consequence. I know some of you on the panel are lawyers. If you look at the list of cases on the docket of the Federal Court of Canada, you'll find that there ar

International Trade committee  I'll start with your last question on the TRIPS waiver. Based on the limited knowledge I have of the agreements that have been made public in other countries, my really strong guess is that Canada has pretty much agreed that we're not going to invoke something like that in our a