Tony Clement urges senators to block generic-drug legislation

[CHIMO]

Industry Minister Tony Clement has asked his Conservative colleagues in the Senate to vote against an NDP bill that would allow generic companies to copy brand-name drugs and sell them at cut rates to the world’s poorest countries.

The supporters of the bill were hoping that endorsements by celebrities like K’naan and Margaret Atwood would persuade senators to fast-track the bill through the Red Chamber before the government falls on Friday and all legislation is lost.

The bill, an attempt to untie the knots in Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime, had the support of an handful of Conservative MPs and Senator Nancy Ruth. As it was written by a former Liberal government, CAMR is so full of tangles that, in seven years of its existence, it has been used by just one company to send one AIDS drug to one company.

But the Conservative government has not endorsed the NDP bill, which was passed in the House of Commons with large support from opposition members. And Mr. Clement, who transferred his 25 per cent stake in a pharmaceutical company to a partner after he became a cabinet minister, made it clear in his e-mail that he does not want to see it passed into law.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/tony-clement-urges-senators-to-block-generic-drug-legislation/article1955588/