OCTOBER TRIPS COUNCIL MEETING
October 24-25, 2011
Canada’s Intervention for Agenda Item G (Access to Medicines)Mr. Chairman, Canada welcomes this opportunity to discuss the implementation of the Paragraph 6 system and to share some thoughts on the issue of access to medicines.
Mr. Chairman, at the last review of the Paragraph 6 system in October 2010, there was an exchange of questions. In response, Canada would like to update Members on Bill C-393, which sought to amend Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime. This Bill died on the Order Paper at the end of the last parliamentary session before the May 2011 general federal elections. No similar bill has yet been introduced in the new session of Parliament. Canada also asked a number of questions at the October 2010 meeting, to which responses remain outstanding. We look forward to receiving those responses today.
Mr. Chairman, as we have said before, the Paragraph 6 system is indeed a useful tool, but it should not be viewed as a panacea for the complex problem that is access to medicines. Indeed, medicines are one of many components of healthcare; price is one of many factors affecting access to medicines; and intellectual property is one of many influences on medicine prices. The effect that intellectual property rights can have on access to medicines, on the price of those medicines and on healthcare as a whole is commensurate with the role of intellectual property alongside other factors affecting the price and availability of medicines, such as infrastructure, medicine use, health systems, and unproductive tariffs on medicines and related commodities that merely tax the sick.
This is why we should assess the Paragraph 6 system not as the only solution, which it is not and was not intended to be, but as a mechanism that seeks to modulate one factor – intellectual property rights – affecting the price of medicines. Let us also remember the genesis of the Paragraph 6 system, wherein Ministers recognized the need for the TRIPS Agreement to be part of “wider national and international action” to address grave public health problems such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The outcome of the difficult negotiations that ensued was a mechanism that was not designed to be a tool to lower medicines prices generally, but rather to help address acute public health crises.
Let us therefore focus, in this Organization and particularly in this Council, on ensuring that the Paragraph 6 system works as it was intended to. To this end, Canada calls on all Members that have not already done so to deposit their instruments of acceptance of the Protocol Amending the TRIPS Agreement. Let us welcome innovative financing mechanisms, such as pooled procurement and voluntary licensing. And also let our respective countries, regions and territories work together, elsewhere in this Organization, in other multilateral fora such as the World Health Organization and bilaterally, to address key issues such as the need for prevention strategies and rational medicine use, the strengthening of health systems and the training of health workers.
Thank you.