Revised NAFTA could cut access to vital medicine
Canada should oppose U.S. effort to assist Big Pharma, Nicholas Caivano and Richard Elliott say.
With talks underway on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), U.S. President Donald Trump’s wish list for an overhauled treaty is under a microscope. So far, little attention has been paid to how the deal could threaten access to medicines in all three NAFTA countries, and pose a broader threat to hundreds of millions more people beyond.
Trump’s starting bid for what the U.S. seeks to achieve pays lip service to respecting a 2001 declaration by World Trade Organization (WTO) countries on “flexibility” in international trade rules on intellectual property to promote access to medicines. A closer look at the list reveals the real agenda: to advance Big Pharma’s demand for more restrictive intellectual property rules that boost their profits at the expense of people needing medicines.
The U.S. objectives state clearly Trump’s desire to make Canadian and Mexican intellectual property policy “similar to that found in U.S. law.” Translation: Trump favours measures to protect patented pharmaceutical companies’ immense profits, whether by delaying the entry of lower-cost generics into the market or weakening regulations or programs that contain prices. Yet more hurdles to the universal national pharmacare that is overdue in Canada.
The original NAFTA normalized a set of restrictive rules on patents and other intellectual property privileges. It also paved the way for such rules in subsequent trade agreements that are aimed at limiting the options available to countries in their efforts to make medicines available and affordable, including for the world’s poorest.
A “modernized” NAFTA could make things even worse, not just for those in North America, but globally, if the new deal serves as a template for future deals.
For example, using what flexibilities remain under current WTO rules, some generic pharmaceutical manufacturers are producing low-cost medicines, providing life-saving access to drugs for some of the world’s most marginalized people. Rapidly scaling up life-saving HIV treatment for millions of people in developing countries has only been possible by using lowpriced, quality-assured generics, particularly from Indian manufacturers.
The threat to access to medicines, and other public goods, exists on another front. Currently, NAFTA has a widely denounced“investor-state dispute settlement” clause. It allows lawsuits against governments for interfering with companies’ profits — or potentially even just their expectations of profits — by regulating in the public interest.
After losing patent claims twice in Canadian courts, multinational pharmaceutical powerhouse Eli Lilly tried to use the NAFTA system to force changes to Canadian patent laws. Fortunately, it lost in its attempt to stretch the current wording of NAFTA to cover intellectual property issues. Now, Big Pharma and numerous other corporate lobby groups have just released an open letter calling on the U.S. to expand the rules on investor-state disputes in a renegotiated NAFTA.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has said Canada seeks “modernization” of NAFTA. This must include safeguarding access to medicines.
First, we need a transparent, independent assessment of how any updated deal will affect public health and human rights in Canada and globally.
Second, countries need greater flexibility in their intellectual property policy to ensure affordable medicines reach the people who need them.
Third, Canada should agree to ditch NAFTA’s damaging investor-state dispute settlement provisions that allow corporations to sue governments that aim to do the right thing by regulating in the public interest. At the very least, Canada (and Mexico) should refuse to expand it further, including rejecting calls to apply it to intellectual property rules.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has professed his concern for global health, including access to medicines, for the hundreds of millions who lack it. It’s time to match words with action by rejecting the demands from the U.S. for more Big Pharma profits at the expense of patients’ health and lives. Some things just shouldn’t be up for negotiation.