International Trade committee  There are a number of clauses in there. First of all, there is the one about patent term extension. Currently, patents are valid for 20 years from the date of filing. The TPP doesn't give a number, it would probably add two years of patent life, which means that would delay gen

International Trade committee  I am going to talk only about pharmaceutical issues. From that perspective, the TPP is going to have potential negative effects—we really won't know until the disputes start and we see how it is going to be interpreted—on both prices and regulations. For instance, a colleague and

International Trade committee  Which one?

International Trade committee  Sure.

International Trade committee  They might disagree. They'd be wrong, but....

International Trade committee  This kind of thing is being debated heavily in the United States, in Australia, and in New Zealand, so yes, sure.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. My name is Joel Lexchin. I teach health policy at York University, and I work at the University Health Network as an emergency physician. I'm going to comment about the possible implications of the TPP on drug regulation and prices. There are five separate

Health committee  I suppose what I've seen that's most likely to lead to patient harm is the inappropriate use of antibiotics for viral conditions or where there's no infection in the first place, or where the wrong antibiotics have been chosen and that leads to cases of C. difficile. C. difficile

Health committee  We will never get to the point where there's absolute safety. That doesn't exist. But certainly the estimates are that somewhere around 60% of adverse drug reactions can be prevented, and one of the ways of preventing those is by having better information about when they occur an

Health committee  I definitely do. For instance, if we have evidence of widespread off-label use of drugs, Bill C-17 would then allow the minister to require companies to undertake additional studies so we can gain better information about whether or not that off-label prescribing is or is not a

Health committee  I think that Professor Herder outlined some of the steps that Health Canada or Canada has already taken in terms of data protection to try to ensure that the information is not used for unfair commercial purposes. In terms of the full results of the clinical trials that have been

Health committee  Yes. I think that we need better sources of data than we currently have. For instance, in most provinces there is no single source where you can find out prescriptions that have been dispensed. British Columbia is an exception. Their PharmaNet program records every prescription

Health committee  I've read a little bit about that, but I wouldn't be able to comment on—

Health committee  Definitely, yes.

Health committee  Well, right now the money to do the trials is primarily with the drug companies. A trial can cost in the range of $150 million. The total CIHR budget, I think, the last time I looked, is about $900 million, and that's for all of the research that it funds, not just drug trials.