Free trade is not new. Trade barriers have, in fact, been declining ever since economist David Ricardo, in 1821, argued in favour of countries producing and exporting goods in which they had a comparative advantage. This continued after the Second World War when commerce increasingly became international in scope, and accelerated again with global integration and real-time digitalization of communications, business intelligence and capital investment.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a free trade agreement that will benefit 800 million people and covers nearly 40 per cent of the world's economy, and includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the U.S. and Vietnam.
The TPP market will be larger than the EU, and include some of the fastest growing economies in the world. It will also boost Canadian economy by 1.6 per cent, about half the rate of the world as a whole.
The deal will provide Canadian business with a larger market and new opportunities for growth, whether the Atlantic fisheries, Ontario's' struggling manufacturing and processing industries, or Western Canada's resource industries.
The TPP will be a win-win-win for Canada: jobs for workers, profits for investors to re-invest and revenue for government programmes such as healthcare and education.
The TPP, however, will require the harmonization of regulatory regimes among the 12 countries, including the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) which includes patents and trademarks that incent and reward innovation. According to the 2014 International IP Index, Canada has some IPR improvements it will have to make: pharmaceutical patent term extensions and data exclusivity, copyrights on the Web, online piracy, border controls, the right of appeal with respect to pharmaceutical patents and the harmonization of filing parameters and case law with regard to patent utility. For example, Canada's current, inflated standard of utility for pharmaceutical patents is discriminatory on a global platform and has invalidated patents here that have been upheld elsewhere in the world. TPP seeks a level playing field for all signatory nations.
But while free trade, and the protection of intellectual property has been recognized and acknowledged since before Ricardo's time there are naysayers who claim that the TPP will jeopardize access to much-needed medicines in the poorest of poor countries.
But these naysayers are ill-informed. The TPP will not undermine global access to, and innovation in, drugs.
The Cameron Institute conducted a 200 page study in 2010 that showed:
The pharmaceutical industry to be the most research-intensive industry in the world ($1 billion invested in 2013 in Canada alone);
Pharmaceuticals, like most legal consumer products, are sold globally using differential pricing - basically charging what each respective market can bear - with the U.S. paying the highest prices for drugs and the least developed countries paying the least - if anything at all;
98.6 per cent of all the medicines deemed "essential" by the World Health Organization (WHO) are already off-patent, genericized, and selling at low prices;
The research-based pharmaceutical industry has spent USD 8.5 billion to provide 9.5 billion doses or treatments to nearly 1 billion of the poorest on earth; and
No evidence that patents posed any barrier to essential medicines being affordable and accessible throughout the world.
The real issues confronting public health in developing countries are:
a lack of potable water
inadequate infrastructure, human resources, and transport
the lack of freedom to allow medicines to be distributed and administered to those who need them, and
military or sectarian dictatorships stockpiling drugs for the elites, the black market at prices well beyond what was intended, or re-sale abroad.
A basic right in law is to retain possession of one's own ideas and discoveries. As trade globalizes and becomes more open, and knowledge more transient, IPR becomes all the more important. Patents have nothing to do with drug access and innovation in the least developed countries, but everything to do with the number of high-paying, knowledge-based jobs in a country and the sustainability of public services.
Canada needs free trade to grow. Free trade with the U.S. and Mexico has forced Canadians to be innovative to compete. To be innovative, industry needs incentives such as IPR. The stronger Canada and its trade partners are economically, the better they will be positioned to respond to the public health needs of those not so blessed. Not the other way around.
- D. Wayne Taylor, PhD, recently retired from McMaster University, serves as the Executive Director of The Cameron Institute, a not-for-profit think tank specializing in health, economic and social issues.
